


To Seek The Old Gods

by excessiveprepositionalphrases



Category: Cthulhu Mythos - H. P. Lovecraft, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: AU, Ancient Elder Thing!Garak, Fluff, I will rub my greedy hands all over Lovecraft's work and make it diverse and gay, Lovecraft AU, M/M, Other, Professor!Julian, Tenderness, soft cuddly romance, victorian au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-08
Updated: 2020-03-24
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:40:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 33,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21712369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/excessiveprepositionalphrases/pseuds/excessiveprepositionalphrases
Summary: Dr. Julian Bashir is a professor of the arcane seeking salvation from the symptoms that have plagued him since a run in with a thing beyond time in the desert when he was a just a boy. Elim Garak is man, or perhaps something more, desperately seeking an outlet for the knowledge in his head. They're both hunting for something a little beyond description, but they're pretty sure they see it in each other's eyes. Even if one of those sets of eyes might not be human.A fluffy, cuddly, cosmic horror Victorian Garashir AU.
Relationships: Julian Bashir/Elim Garak
Comments: 69
Kudos: 76





	1. The Bar

Tending a bar steps away from the residence halls of the most esteemed college of Miskatonic University meant hearing thousands and thousands of stories, all varying wildly in believability. So the bartender, a short, round man with ginger hair by the name of Robertson, who looked more like a cartoon than a real man, had developed a certain sense for picking the ones who truly carried the haunting in their bones.

He wasn’t truly able to explain what the haunting was, but he knew it when he saw it. There was a certain black glow hanging behind the eyes of some of the men in their tailored suits, as if they carried the void within themselves; if you looked deep enough into the eyes of a man who carried the haunting, Robertson would explain, you could see the stars. A man with a knowledge of astronomy, however, might happen to notice that they were not the right stars. After 15 years behind the bar, Robertson was confident he understood everything there was to understand about the phantoms that hung darkly around the frames of rich, well dressed young men with a taste for the occult. And then, one day, Robertson had the misfortune - or maybe the privilege, he could never quite decide - of meeting a man who moved the goalposts so far for what it meant to carry the haunting that Robertson had to zero his scale on the concept.

It was a cold, drizzly day in mid-November when he swept in. Robertson remembered seeing in the papers that the University had hired a professor from Sudan, whose exact subject of research was still somewhat unclear. The vagueness around him had made him more than slightly controversial even before he arrived. The man’s name was Doctor Julian Bashir, and all anyone knew about him was that he was known in the darker circles, as much as that can be anything but an oxymoron, as being the Middle East’s foremost expert on the arcane. While none of the myriad articles about Dr. Bashir and the controversy surrounding him had included a photo, Robertson felt sure as he studied the immaculately dressed figure slowly sweeping towards his bar that this was none other than Dr. Julian Bashir. The Doctor sat down, artfully tossing his beige duster coat over a stool, knitted his long, thin fingers together, and rested his chin on top of them.

“Robertson!”

The voice of one Elim Garak interrupted Robertson’s focus. Elim was, in his own way, even more of a mystery than the well-dressed newcomer who was now sat so thoughtfully in the center of the bar. He was shorter and stockier, with black hair and eyes that hovered somewhere between blue and an unnatural shade of purple. Robertson approximated that he was probably somewhere in his 50s, he had an accent that placed him somewhere in Scandinavia, and Robertson was fairly sure that his area of study had something to do with what the professors often diplomatically called “Superconceptual Megafauna” – an invented term that existed exclusively because the academics had learned long ago that telling your listener that you studied ancient, possibly non-existent sea monsters did not tend to inspire respect. This, Robertson hated to admit, was all he actually knew about the shadowy Mr. Garak. The man was not forthcoming with any information about his studies, his past, or anything at all that had anything to do with himself. The legend among the students was that even as a professor he wasn’t much better. He would gladly stand at the front of a room and read another’s words, but any questions regarding his own personal experiences were met with infuriating evasiveness. The students had taken to avoiding him and his classes entirely, but by the grace of tenure he had managed to keep his job and his salary. The reality was that he spent the better portion of his time sitting where he was now, in a shadowed seat at the end of the bar.

Robertson stepped into the dark corner. Mr. Garak raised his empty glass. The thin, green, crystalizing film around the inside rim betrayed the absinthe that had been inside it.

“Another, Robertson. If you’d be so kind.”

For such a mysterious character, he spoke with an almost affected politeness. Robertson took the empty glass.

“Of course, sir.”

Robertson was painfully aware that the focused eyes of his new patron stood between him and the absinthe fountain at the other end of the bar. He fixed his eyes on it and marched straight past the Doctor’s stationary, piercing gaze. He barely hid his relief when he passed by the Doctor without a word being said to him. But as he arranged a sugar cube above the freshly swirling green liquid, he could feel the Doctor’s eyes on his back, focused and intent. There was nothing wrong with the man, in his appearance or his actions, but the intensity of the haunting which hovered around him made Robertson deeply uncomfortable in his presence. Robertson made a show of watching the sugar drip slowly into the glass. It was as dull as watching paint dry, but it made him look busy enough, he hoped, discourage his patron from speaking to him at all. This wasn’t going to work for long; he felt it, building, unavoidable. The interaction was coming like a freight train.

“Sir?”

There it was. Robertson stiffened. He put on his best unaffected face and turned to face his customer.

“Scotch, neat. Thank you.”

The Doctor’s voice was softer than he had expected. Robertson nodded deferentially. Julian smiled a little, and Robertson got his first real look at the man. He was somewhere in his early 50s, Robertson guessed. He was dressed in a duster coat over a tan suit and a green brocade waistcoat, with gold cuff links and a watch chain with pendants of unfamiliar symbols hanging from it. He had a prominent nose and deep green eyes, and the dark brown of his hair and beard was slowly being overtaken by grey. He was handsome, unusually handsome, and Robertson found himself staring.

“Are you alright?” the Doctor asked.

Robertson shook himself. Dr. Bashir spoke kindly, in an aristocratic accent. Robertson quickly poured a scotch and passed it to him.

“Thank you. Are you in need of some assistance, sir?”

Robertson shook his head.

“No, but thank you. Pleased to meet you. Name’s Robertson. I’ve tended this bar for the last 20 years.”

“Doctor Julian Bashir.” He extended a hand and Robertson took it. The handshake was firm, but the hand was soft. There a softness of bearing about the Doctor that Robertson hadn’t expected. For a man so heavily carrying the haunting, Robertson had expected someone dark, ruthless, terrifying. Dr. Bashir seemed nothing but lovely. His face betrayed that he knew things, things it was best for a human not to know. But he seemed empathic and gentle, concerned for those around him, his face permanently set in a soft smile. Kindness and concern mixed with the void behind his eyes like cream in a cup of black coffee.

An awkward silence began to grow, making space for the sound of the absinthe fountain dripping, and Robertson remembered the other drink with a start. He collected the absinthe, now the color of liquid jade, and carried it gingerly back to Mr. Garak. The dark-haired Scandinavian sat staring at the Doctor from the other end of the bar. Robertson placed the drink in front of him.

“Fresh round of the green fairy for ya’, Elim.”

Elim did not appear to have heard a word. He was fixed, entranced, on the figure of Dr. Bashir. He picked up the drink and slowly brought it to his lips, eyes unmoving. He took a slow sip and paused, apparently considering its flavor, before speaking.

“Who’s that, Robertson? In the duster coat.”

“Doctor Bashir. The Sudanese professor.”

“Bashir.” Elim took another slow sip. He seemed to be tasting the name as much as the drink. “There’s something odd about him.”

“He’s got the haunting,” Robertson confirmed.

“That he does.”

“I could introduce you.”

“What justification would you give?” Elim asked.

“What justification do you have?”

“You know,” Elim apparently changed subjects, peering into his glass, “most people don’t like absinthe. They find the flavor quite…unpalatable.”

“It’s illegal in some places, you know.”

“But not here.”

“No, sir,” Robertson confirmed. “Not here.”

“The average man would rather a scotch.”

“I certainly would.”

Elim tipped his drink back and peered into it. He tilted it slightly towards the Doctor.

“What’s he drinking?”

“Scotch.”

“I wonder if he likes absinthe.”

“I’ll introduce you,” Robertson answered, knowingly.

“You’re a good man, Robertson.”

“I do my best.”

At the other end of the bar, Doctor Julian Bashir was deep in his own thoughts. Thanks to the generous salary the university had given him, he was richer than he had ever been before in his life. He suspected that everyone assumed that was his reason for accepting the position, but in truth, the bright lure of thousands of dollars had been much less of a motivating factor than a reasonable person would assume.

Julian Bashir had spent the last 30 years of his life in search of the old gods. He had made a name for himself along the way as a great expert in them, and for this knowledge, he had paid dearly. He saw flashes, colorful shapes at the edges of his vision, that always seemed to be beckoning and taunting him. There were times when his thoughts did not seem to be his own. Paintings often seemed to move and shift, and the grain in the wood of the bar was, at that moment, morphing and warping grotesquely under his elbows. And the dreams – that was to say nothing of the dreams. Julian Bashir was a man who no longer slept much. Every time he found himself slipping, drifting off into the warm, milky haze of sleep, he saw images, forms of great, incomprehensible things, things which would drive a man mad on sight. But for better or for worse he was not yet mad, and instead of the merciful release of madness, he was forced to carry, and to understand, knowledge which he surer every day that human brains were not capable of holding. His brain apparently was, but he had decided long before not to question that. He wanted, more than anything, to forget every bit of what he knew. He longed to be a child, running through the streets of Khartoum, without a care in his world. Before he knew of the old ones. Before he met the _thing_ in the desert. Before all of this. But that, obviously, was not going to happen. So, he had decided, if he couldn’t erase the knowledge, all there was left to do was to devote his life to it.

He was stuck. All that knowledge, and he was still stuck. For years it was as if the directions had come without his even needing to look. A sense, a hint – that was all he needed, and he had known where to go. But the hints had stopped coming, even if the nightmares hadn’t, and if Julian Bashir ever wanted to sleep again, he needed _help_. The assistance of people with as much knowledge as he had. So when the Miskatonic had reached out to him, asking him to take an academic position with almost no duties, his soul responsibility being to collect his salary and make some small contribution to the research, he had jumped at the chance. The money was unimportant. But the community! The chance to surround himself with the only group of people in the world who had even a chance of having some little bit of knowledge that wasn’t already in his head was irresistible. As soon as he had stepped off the boat he had felt a pull, deep in his bones. It was the kind of pull that had guided him all along, and it was the first time he’d felt the pull in 6 months. He followed it without hesitation, and it had brought him here, to this seat, in this bar, drinking cheap scotch and watching the bartender, who seemed afraid of him for no reason he could conceive of.

He felt an itching in his side and realized all at once that he was being watched. He glanced towards the end of the bar. There was a man, handsome and pale, with black hair, holding a small glass filled with green liquid in his hand, seated at the end of the bar. And he was staring, intently, at Julian. Julian made eye contact and gave the man a small nod. The black-haired man kept his eyes trained on Julian. He raised his glass to his lips and took a sip, nodding it slightly in Julian’s direction. His eyes, focused, began to slowly shift. Julian blinked. There was no way he was seeing that correctly. But he was! The eyes of the dark-haired man at the end of the bar, still focused on him, were…changing. Shifting, from blue to a nearly glowing, unnatural shade of violet. The pupils, too, were growing larger, and changing shape, from round to something more closely resembling an 8 pointed star. The man was situated at the other end of the room, yet Julian could see this as clearly as if he had been standing there next to him. Anyone else would have assumed their own insanity then and there; decided they were unable to trust their own eyes, pushed away their drink and called it a day. But Julian had seen, and touched, much worse, with his own eyes and his own hands. He had known things to be real and corporeal that exceeded even the most fanciful interpretations of what the universe could hold. A strange, beautiful, dark-haired man with eyes that changed color and shape staring at him with an expression that mirrored infatuation? That – that was comparatively easy to believe.

All at once, the man from the end of the bar was practically on top of him. Julian looked at his drink and back up again and then he was there, so close that the clouds of his breath in the cold air seemed to hover around Julian’s head, his eyes just as blue and human as they had looked a few moments before, with no evidence of what Julian was sure he had seen. Julian started.

“Dr. Bashir?” the man asked, his voice somewhat higher than Julian had expected.

“Yes?”

“Elim Garak,” the man introduced himself, extending a large hand. Julian took it carefully, his face barely able to contain his awe. “I believe you’re newly employed at the same institution as myself.”

Julian barely avoided stammering. This man had an air about him, though Julian wasn’t sure what it was. And he was handsome – dark hair and blue eyes and strong features, an air of quiet mystery hanging about him.

“I’ve just arrived. Haven’t even seen the campus yet,” Julian responded, desperately trying to sound collected.

“Perhaps you’ll do me the honor of allowing me to show you around.”

“You’re very kind. That would be lovely.”

Elim paused. He hadn’t expected to get this far.

“Do you drink absinthe, Doctor?”

Julian sensed a question that was about more than a drink.

“On occasion.”

“Have a drink with me, Doctor?”

“Are you buying, Mr. Garak?”

“I am.”

“Then I will.”


	2. Conversation

Two glasses of jade green liquid were placed gently in the center of the small table that was now occupied by Elim and Julian. Elim lifted one and raised it towards the Doctor, who raised his own and nodded politely.

“What brings you to this side of the world, Doctor?” Elim asked.

Julian debated his answer, and how much he was willing to give away.

“Academic Community, mostly. I felt I had exhausted what research was available to me in Sudan and the surrounding regions. I think I’ve spoken to every expert the Middle East has to offer.”

Elim made a polite noise of understanding, urging the doctor to go on.

“I felt like I was in an academic bubble, a bit. Same people, same ideas. I wanted fresh, new concepts. A new frontier.”

“I hardly consider England a new frontier, Doctor.”

“Well – personally. Comparatively,” Julian stammered. Elim smiled a little, amused by Julian’s embarrassment.

“And what about yourself, Mr. Garak? What brought you here? From…somewhere in Scandinavia, I’m guessing, based on your accent.”

“Norway,” Elim confirmed. “Tromsø, specifically. I read here, and after leaving for a while and making a name for myself not unlike you, I returned at their beckoning.”

“What do you study, specifically?”

“Superconceptual Megafauna.”

Julian eyed him suspiciously.

“You’ll forgive me for being unfamiliar with the term.”

“Monsters, Doctor,” Elim patronized, taking a dramatic sip of his drink and raising a mischievous eyebrow.

Julian’s eyes focused off into the middle distance. He could see it – the thing. The great dark thing in the dunes. An eye, unfathomably large, a tentacle, a hand. He could see it in his mind, or maybe actually in his vision, he could never decide. He knew enough about the brain to know that what we see is really only what we interpret anyway, and sometimes late at night when the images began to taunt him again he would quietly philosophize on the difference between a flashback and the sight of what was actually present, and the difference between the mind’s eye and the real eye.

Elim looked deep into the distant green eyes of the man across from him.

“Doctor?” he asked softly. There was no response. He raised his voice slightly.

“Doctor Bashir?” he repeated. Again there was no response, only a blank, distracted stare into the middle distance on the face of his drinking companion. Elim debated the propriety of his next step, but as he stared into the vacant green eyes, he decided it was necessary. He reached out and gently touched Julian’s wrist. Julian’s eyes snapped back with a start.

“Are you alright, Doctor?” Elim asked softly. Julian noted the sound of real, almost affectionate concern in the other man’s voice. Julian took a focused breath and nodded.

“I’m fine. I apologize. I have these moments, sometimes. These episodes. Do forgive me.”

“Of course. I was merely concerned for your welfare. You seemed quite disturbed, and I wouldn’t want to consider anything unpleasant occurring when we haven’t even had a chance to get to know each other.”

Julian realized as he went to lift his glass that the other man’s hand was still resting on his. He found himself staring at it for a moment, unsure of what to say. Elim saw the Doctor staring and realized the same, and quickly tucked the offending hand back around his own drink. Julian was sure he saw a hint of pink flushing on his drinking partner’s pale cheeks.

“I’d love to discuss your research with you sometime,” Julian hastily added. “I have some experiences with specimens of which you may not already be familiar.”

“I’d be fascinated. I’ve been at this so long, it’s rare that anyone brings me anything truly new and novel anymore.”

“I feel sure I could bring you something, Mr. Garak.”

“I plan to hold you to that, Doctor. For that matter, may I ask what your degree is in? I’d love to know where you managed to pick up a legitimate degree in these sorts of studies.”

“I didn’t.”

“You – do you mean to tell me you’re not actually a doctor?”

“No, no, that’s not my meaning at all. I meant only that this is not what my Doctorate is related to.”

“Then what are you a Doctor of, Doctor?” Elim asked, the small smile on his face betraying his self-satisfaction with the minor wordplay.

“Medicine,” Julian answered matter-of-factly, with the expression of a person was used to causing surprise and quite enjoyed doing so.

Elim considered the well-dressed form in front of him again. For some reason, the idea that the man calling himself a doctor was an actual doctor had not occurred to him.

“It amazes me that you found time to practice. I know these studies can be quite consuming.”

“This hasn’t always been my field. I shifted my life in major ways when I was a young man. There were…incidents…” Julian trailed off. Elim nodded knowingly, as if the concept of shadowy events not to be spoken of was one he understood intuitively. A silence fell over the table, but somehow, neither man found it awkward, both finding some odd sense of comfortableness in the space.

“Come now, Mr. Garak. I find your description of your story far too thin. Tell me about yourself. Your past, your history, what brought you here! Your light description is not nearly enough.”

“I know not much more of you, Doctor,” Elim deflected. “You’ve answered my questions in much the same way.”

“Okay,” Julian answered guiltily. “You give me more detail and I promise to do the same. But you” – Julian pointed at Elim with his glass – “You must go first.”

Elim took a breath and set his glass down, cracked his knuckles and placed his elbows on the table, settling in as if preparing for a strenuous effort.

“Fair play, Doctor. You want more story? I’ll give you more story.

“I’m from Tromsø, as I said. I lived there my entire life before moving here. My mother was a wonderful woman, a little older than one might expect with flowing grey hair who knitted sweaters using yarn she spun from the sheep we kept on our farm. She sold those sweaters and kept us fed. We mostly ate what was around, truthfully. Mutton, deer, caribou, the occasional seal. And seafood. So much seafood. I’ve eaten more fish in my years than I would have conceived as existing in this world. My father was something a little different. He was a fisherman, and he rarely spoke. I went fishing with him whenever he would let me. He wouldn’t always let me, though, and some cold mornings he would look at me and softly say ‘Sea’s evil today, Elim. Best you stay home.’ The phrase never varied, and it was nearly the only thing he ever said.

“Even with his silence I always knew he loved me. It was an odd kind of relationship and an even odder breed of love, with him being so completely inscrutable. But there was something, always, in the looks he gave me or the way he would say that phrase – ‘Sea’s evil today, Elim’ – that made me unfailingly sure he still cared. Sometimes when I was very, very little he would take me in his arms and quietly say ‘You’ll be the one, Elim. You’ll be the one to bring back Yog-Sothoth.’ And then he would say something else, in a language I think in hindsight may have been Latin. But I was too young to understand that, and I have no idea what the words may have been. I have reason to believe it may have been some sort of prayer or incantation. I’m truly not sure how I remember the name Yog-Sothoth at all, but for some reason, that name stuck with me just the same, and I’m quite positive that is the name that was used. But when I got old enough that it became clear I could understand and remember, they stopped saying any of it, and I don’t think they ever did again.

“The middling years of my life, from very young to college years, are unimportant. Deeply uninteresting. Once I was old enough to need to be educated my parents presented me with a box, filled with money. I managed to suss of them, with much effort, that apparently since my birth they had been squirreling away money to send me to this ‘Miskatonic’. I wondered how they even knew of such a place since they were quite blind to anything outside of their own reality. They told me it was best not to question, and that I should come here and – how did they put it – ‘Learn whatever that place sees fit to teach you.’ I, of course, knew nothing of the place or what it was. Obviously in the years since I have learned. And that name – Yog Sothoth – has popped up in a few archaic texts that have happened to pass through my hands.

“After my studies here I went home and stayed there a while, happy and cold in the Norwegian snow. But my parents died, as parents tend to, and I was forced to find other employment for my time. I filled it with more reading and more studies. It consumed me. I was just beginning to question whether it might be advantageous for me to seek travel and see some other parts of the world when I received the communication from the school asking if I might consider coming back. I took it as a sign, and returned.”

Julian listened intently. For some reason, he found this man impossibly fascinating, and all he wanted to take in every word. Moreover, he couldn’t help thinking that the bulky Norwegian was one of the most beautiful men he’d ever seen, his blue eyes lighting with each new enigmatic expression as he spoke. He drifted into staring into the other man’s eyes as he listened. He realized all at once that Elim had stopped talking, and scrambled to come up with a response.

“Sounds like a rather cozy life, actually,” he said.

“It was, Doctor. It was indeed.”

Another silence fell on the table, this one somehow less comfortable. Julian was going over the name in his head – the name of Yog-Sothoth. He was sure he had read that name in some of the rarer tomes he had studied, the _Kitab Al'aemaq_ from the Gulf of Aqaba and the _Liber Ivonis_ , and repeatedly in the fragments of the _Necronomicon_ that he had been lucky enough to get his hands on. An outer god, certainly, written of with great respect and fear, a being of overwhelming power. He was drifting off into theory when Elim interrupted his thoughts.

“And how about you, Doctor?” he asked. “What’s your story?”

The Doctor took a sip of his drink and began.

“I had a lovely childhood, not unlike yours. My mother died in childbirth. I knew her only through stories. But my father was a wonderful man, caring and kind, and he did his best to care for me. He loved my mother and spoke of her often. I think he would have been a different man, a happier man, had she lived. He was a lovely man, but he was always a little sad. Wondering what life would have been like had someone been able to save her is one of my first memories, and I think that’s where the first seeds of my interest in medicine began, even if I didn’t understand that at the time. My father was something of a genius – an architect – and we were always comfortable. I spent my childhood reading everything – poetry, ancient works, random fragments of scrolls I turned up in the desert.

“My grandparents lived in a small house in the middle of the desert. I spent many blazing hot summers with them when I was a child. They were loving but not very involved. They let me do…whatever I wanted. I was an only child so those times were mostly spent alone, and with my grandparents’ disengagement, I spent a lot of my childhood exploring the desert. I had a sense of direction to rival a bird almost before I could walk, and probably could have made a career guiding people across it by the time I was 5 or so. It gave me a taste for freedom very early, and I took to running around Khartoum, where I lived with my father, on my own in the same way. It was wonderful, to be honest. I had all the freedom a child could ever want. Every day was a new adventure.

“When I was still very young, I had an experience. I’d rather not talk about it, to be honest. But it changed me. It changed me in ways I can’t explain. I’m told I had a breakdown – if an 8-year-old can have a breakdown. But I stopped running around the desert after that.

“I kept running around the city though. When I was 12, I was hiding behind a vendor’s cart on the side of a street. A little girl, not much younger than me, ran out into the street. She was hit by a horse, running far too fast. Her legs were…mangled. Horribly broken. I ran out into the street and tried to comfort her, but there was nothing I could do but call for help. I followed her when the doctors took her. We became friends after that, she and I. But it inspired me. All I wanted from that moment on was to be able to help people. I immediately turned to studying medicine. I used all the time I had spent being a street child and used it to read everything I could about medicine, anatomy – everything about the human body I could take in. I told my father all I wanted was to be a doctor. Thankfully, my father had enough money to make that happen. The moment I was old enough to attend university I was on a boat to Oxford.

“I was a doctor for years. A good one, I might add. After my studies, I went back to Khartoum, moved back into my father’s house, and set up a practice caring for the people I had worried for so much when I was a child. The house was massive and easy to live in. Again I had a comfortable life, happy, fed, cool in the afternoons and warm in the nights, and I spent my time caring for people. But unfortunately to be a doctor isn’t to be a magician. When the cancer comes there’s nothing one can do. When my father died, I went out into the desert for the first time in years. I was seeking – peace, understanding. Something. There was another…incident. That one changed me. I sold the house and began to devote my life to the studies we now share. I read further and deeper than I ever had before. I began collecting fragments of old texts, things previously unknown. I began to develop a sense that that seemed to lead me, and I followed that sense for years. Sometimes I felt like I was getting somewhere. Sometimes it stalled, but there was always a pull. But one day it faded. And almost at that moment, I was invited here. It seemed the only next step, and without the pull I had been relying on I needed help. This seemed the only place on earth filled with people of similar knowledge, so it seemed right to come.”

Elim slipped, much like the Doctor, into staring into the other man’s eyes as he talked. But unlike Elim, Julian noticed that his conversation partner was doing this, and returned the eye contact mercilessly. Most of his monologue was delivered staring unblinkingly into Elim’s eyes as if they were trapped in some sort of odd ocular combat. There was a kind of intensity building between them, but neither seemed willing to acknowledge it. When Julian concluded his tale, Elim tore his eyes away from the Doctor’s and did his best to consider and respond as if he hadn’t just been locked into one of the most oddly intimate moments of his life.

“Do you miss it, Doctor? Being a healer?” Elim asked, desperate to direct the conversation.

“Every day. I try to offer my assistance where I can.”

“I think your skills might be of use here. The students…tend to have some odd maladies. Unsurprising, given the kinds of things we play with. They might appreciate the care of a Doctor with similar knowledge and understanding to their own. And one so kind, at that,” Elim added, considering his companion’s face. “Our medics are…not particularly gentle people. They’re not known for their kindness. I think the students would be very happy to interact with a slightly friendlier brand of medicine.”

“Let me know what you need, and I’ll be happy to assist.”

“Don’t worry about that, Doctor. I assure you, if there’s one thing the Miskatonic has no problems doing, it’s asking too much of its employees.”

Julian laughed. The smile reached his eyes, small wrinkles making themselves visible around his eyes and cheeks. Elim felt that smile in his heart.

“Now if you’ll excuse me, Doctor. I hate to abandon this so pleasant of conversations, but I have class at 5, and while the students don’t like me, they’ll be very annoyed if I don’t appear.”

Elim stood to leave, and Julian did as well, extending his hand for a parting courtesy. Elim gladly took it. The hand was soft and warm, and he found himself lingering in the grip a little longer than justifiable. The Doctor noticed it, but he had no intention of acknowledging it, for fear it might make the other man self-conscious of the action. Elim managed to convince himself to release the grip, tipped his hat to the Doctor before putting it on his head, and stepped out of the bar. Julian watched him as he slowly walked down the street in the afternoon sunshine. Content that he had fulfilled whatever he was being pulled here to do, the Doctor collected his own hat and went to pay his tab at the bar – only a few cents for the cheap scotch, as the drink that had come after had been graciously purchased by his new acquaintance.

Robertson eyed Julian suspiciously as he placed a small pile of coins into the bartender’s hand.

“Is everything alright, Robertson?”

“Perfectly, Doctor. Enjoy your afternoon.”

Julian tipped his hat and turned to step out the door.

“Doctor – wait,” Robertson corrected. Julian turned back to face the bartender. Robertson’s expression was one of quiet concern.

“You seemed to talk to Mr. Garak for some time, Doctor. He’s not known for being the most forthcoming type. Did you get anything of substance out of him?”

“Quite a bit, actually. He told me a great deal about himself, about his childhood in Norway and what led him here.”

The bartender raised an eyebrow.

“Lies, Doctor,” he cautioned. “All of it. Whatever he told you, I can almost assure you it was false. Watch out for him, Doctor. Be cautious of this relationship. Elim Garak has made many friends. It tends not to end well for them.”

“I thank you for your consideration, sir, but I think I have been around enough to know what I’m dealing with.”

Robertson shrugged a little.

“You may do what you like, Doctor. I only warn you to be careful of him. He’s not like you and me, somehow. I couldn’t tell you how, but I can smell it on him just as much as I can smell the haunting on you. You might be well-matched, honestly, yourself and Mr. Garak. But still – be careful, Doctor.”

“Thank you, sir,” Julian responded. “I will take that under advisement.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I shamelessly relocated the Misktonic to England here, and I know it. I want this in England so I will set it in England. Lovecraft is dead, screw Lovecraft, I will bend canon to my will.


	3. Horse & House

The Doctor, fresh off the boat and his odd conversation, knew he needed a horse posthaste if he was to get around the hilly terrain around the University, and around the grounds of the house he’d acquired sight unseen. In lieu of any nearby farms, a problem common to port cities in general, he approached the first stagecoach stable he saw and placed a stack of notes on the counter.

“Let me guess: you want our best horse,” the man behind the counter predicted.

“No, I don’t think that I do, actually,” Julian responded. “How about you show me the horse most in need of a home.”

“That’s a might’ sentimental take on the concept’a horses, Sir.”

Julian shook his head with disappointment. “Just show me a horse.”

The man behind the counter stepped away and appeared almost immediately again leading an oversized, pure white horse with an assortment of spots on her rump.

“Let’s us make a deal,” the man said. “This one’s nameless. No one can handle her. She’s not mean, not at all. But she’s skittish as all. Definitely ‘on’t be pullin’ any coaches. She’d’uh gone to glue, otherwise. You want her? She’s yours. Pay me ‘hat the glue’d have paid me, and you take her. We’ll give you saddle and all.”

Julian looked the horse up and down. She was massive, oddly massive, like a Clydesdale that had lost the plot, and looked afraid like only a horse can. Julian extended a hand towards her and she immediately stepped towards him, unprompted, and nuzzled into his hand. Julian gently patted her nose and noticed the red raw patches and hints of dried blood around her mouth, betraying someone’s cruel hand on a bit. He stepped to the side and studied the length of her body. The horse followed him with her head, pressing her nose into his ear. Her stomach and legs were filthy, dirty and scabbed with dried blood. Julian looked up at the face of the man still holding the reins and suddenly was able to see the cruelty in it. The horse nudged Julian again with her nose as if begging to be taken. He patted her nose again.

“S’More than anyone has ever been able to get from her before. I think it best you take her, Sir.”

“I think it best indeed,” Julian said coldly, and held his hand out for the reins. The man handed them to him and turned his attention to the pile of money already within his reach. He counted a few bills out of it, apparently his approximation of the value of the horse, and held the remainder of the pile back towards Julian.

“Keep it,” Julian nearly growled. “Use it to buy yourself some compassion.”

Julian led the horse slowly out of the stable. She was jumpy, certainly, but seemed to have no problem following him. He pulled her a few hundred yards away from the stable and around a corner, away from the stablemaster's prying ears, and turned to the horse, considering her as if she were human. Her eyes seemed to plead with him.

“You’re safe now, okay?” he whispered. The horse head-butted him slightly, pressing her head into his chest. She seemed to be trembling. Julian’s experience with scared horses was limited, but his experience with scared humans was extensive, and in lieu of other ideas he fell back on that instinct. He reached out and patted her neck softly.

“Hey…hey…shhhh…” he desperately tried to soothe the frightened animal. “I know you don’t understand me, but you’re alright now.” The horse huffed a little and removed her head from his chest. He ran a hand down her nose and continued to speak to her as if she understood him as he removed the bridle and bit from her head.

“Let’s start your life over, how does that sound? You’re mine now. No more of whatever those people did to you. We’ll get you cleaned up, and you can take me to the country. Deal?”

The horse neighed, as if in perfect understanding. Julian studied the bridle in his hand. He removed a large knife from his pocket and split the leather, and cut the bit free from the rest of the bridle, casting it on the ground. Controlling a horse without a bit was a dangerous prospect, he knew, but there seemed to be some understanding here, and the horse’s mouth was so raw he felt bad doing anything less. He started to place the now bit-less bridle back over the horse’s head, but she backed away in fear.

“Hey – none of that,” he soothed. “I’m not going to hurt you.” He held the bridle up to the horse’s face for her consideration, as if she comprehended.

“No bit, see?” he said softly. “No more pain.” The horse, again, somehow seemed to understand, and calmed enough to let him place the bridle back over her head. She still needed a bath, and possibly some bandages, but she trusted him, and that was what mattered. Everything else could come later. He stopped to take in his surroundings on the random side street he had turned into. There was a pub across from him. He quickly assembled a plan and tied up his newfound horse next to it.

“I’ll be back, okay?” he promised the horse. He could have sworn she nodded. He stepped into the pub and made straight for the young man behind the bar.

“Help you, sir?” The youth asked.

“You can. A rather odd one, this. I need water. A bucket of it. And a sponge.”

“Odd indeed, Sir, but I think I can help. Can I ask what for?”

“I’ve got a horse” Julian explained. “She needs some cleaning up. It’s a long story but I don’t have much time and I don’t really have anywhere to take her.”

“Oh, bless, sir,” the youth said, a smile creeping across his face. “I love horses. They tell me I’m sentimental, but no matter. I’ll bring you everything you need.”

“You’re a good lad,” the Doctor responded gratefully.

The youth from the bar appeared outside a moment later with a bucket full of water, sponges, and rags. He stopped short when he laid eyes on the horse.

“She’s beautiful, Sir.”

“I have to agree,” Julian answered.

“Do you need a hand? Only I’d love to pat her a little, and you seem an honest man, and I do know my way around horses.”

“Be my guest. Do you have a name?”

The youth collected a sponge and began to gently clean the dirt from a patch of the horse’s stomach.

“James, sir. Yourself? You’re not familiar to me, and we don’t get many newcomers here.”

“Doctor Julian Bashir. You’re correct about me being new. I only just arrived.”

James turned quickly and extended his hand. Julian shook it warmly.

“Forgive me, Doctor. I had no idea.”

“Don’t worry about that,” Julian reassured him. “I don’t exactly flaunt it. Want to give me a hand, James? She’s a perfect horse, but I’ve no idea what to name her.”

James stepped back and took in the whole of the oversized horse.

“I’d call her Aletheia, sir. The Greek spirit of truth.”

“Aletheia.” As Julian said the name the horse looked at him, apparently accepting it.

“It’s perfect,” Julian said with a smile. He clapped a hand on the young man’s shoulder. “Thank you.”

Having noticed the old wounds on Aletheia’s legs and developing a fondness for the Doctor, James excused himself briefly and returned with a roll of bandages. The two men worked for an hour or more on the horse, James sponging off the larger patches of dirt and the Doctor gently cleaning and bandaging the old wounds on her lower legs. By the time they were finished, she was was the most beautiful horse either man had ever seen. Julian unrolled a stack of bills and pressed it into James’ hand.

“I couldn’t –” James began, but Julian cut him off.

“You’ve been a great help. Take it.”

“It’d be dishonest, Doctor. I’ve done almost nothing, only wanted a chance to touch that beautiful horse.”

Julian shook his head and pressed a hand into the young man’s shoulder.

“I’m not used to having this kind of money. It happened quite by accident, and I’m still learning to live with it. I feel sort of guilty, walking around with this much money on my person and knowing there’s more in the bank. It’s an odd feeling, a shaky feeling, and it’s not one I like. The only thing I find so far that seems to take the edge off is to be as generous with my good fortune as I can. You’re a good lad and I’d be in bad straights without your help. Take the money, and make good choices with it, and be ready to help the next needy traveler.”

“Thank you, Doctor. Are you staying here in town? Can I help you find anything, building, hotel?”

Julian shook his head.

“You’re very kind, but no thank you. I have a house in the country that I haven’t even seen yet. That’s part of what the horse is for.”

“God be with you, Doctor.”

“Thank you, James.”

* * *

Elim Garak was thinking about the Doctor. He had been thinking about the Doctor. As he taught his disinterested pupils, as he cleaned off the desk in his classroom, as he took the slow way home on his own well-loved horse, he was thinking about the Doctor. He was thinking about the deep tan skin and the green eyes set in the kind, thin face, the aristocratic accent with the hints of Arabic in it, making all the sounds just a little more complex, he was thinking about the way the Doctor had seemed so gentle, so openly concerned for everyone around him, the softness of that warm hand in his own. He stabled his horse and climbed up the stairs to his small apartment and made himself a disappointing sandwich and he thought about the Doctor. He was sure no one had ever made him feel this way before. He could think of no one he’d ever met that he’d found himself thinking about for hours afterward. He was being a little ridiculous, he thought, but it didn’t stop him from thinking about the Doctor. The sun had long since set over the distant hills, and though it was early still, he decided it was probably best to go to bed and try to sleep off the unexplained infatuation.

What Elim didn’t know, was that on the other side of town, at the docks, as he unloaded trunks onto a stagecoach, the Doctor was thinking about him. Julian was tired and a little hungry and many other things, but if he didn’t get to the house, he had nowhere to sleep, so riding out to it into the middle of the night was looking to be his only option. He had to get out himself, and Aletheia, and the trunks of belongings that had come with him, so he’d hired a stagecoach and promised them an exorbitant rate if they would fulfill the request of carrying only his belongings as he rode behind them on Aletheia. This was as easy as anything the driver had ever done, and he had readily agreed. It wasn’t very late yet but it was dark, and everyone had more or less gone home, so it was down to Julian and the coach driver to unload the trunks on their own. Manual labor has a way of making one think, and so Julian was thinking. He was thinking about the ride ahead, which promised to be cold and dark. He was thinking about Elim, all blue eyes and suspicious expression and an attitude he was sure was flirtation. He was thinking about how easy everything had been here: in the course of just one day he had bought a horse from a company that made its money off its horses, and thus was unlikely to give them up freely. He had secured the assistance of a bartender, not in making a drink, but in washing a horse. And now he had a stagecoach helping him ride off into the country and late into the night, carrying nothing but trunks, something that was way outside of their standard, he was sure. And all this had taken was money. So, so much of it. Thanks to the inexplicably massive salary he’d been handed by the University it was of no concern, but as a man who’d never been independently rich before, the extent to which a roll of banknotes eased a life was not a realization he was enjoying. He had been comfortable with his father, and his father had even been wealthy, but he’d never carried this much money that was his own, and he was struggling to get used to it.

But mostly he was thinking about the house. When he had made the decision to come back to England, he had begun telling those he knew in Khartoum, and one of his father’s friends had asked him if he had a place to stay once he arrived. When he had said no, the man had explained to him that he had an old family manor in the country not far at all from the University and that all he wanted to do was get it off his hands. Would Julian, the man asked, be willing to take the house? How much, Julian had asked him. Free, the man had replied. He was so ready to rid himself of the home that he would have nearly paid Julian to take it. When Julian had pressed him for his reasoning, he had explained, in a tone Julian immediately recognized as common to people who’ve been spooked, that the house was haunted. But that seemed right up Julian’s alley, and the offer of a free manor house was simply irresistible, so Julian had taken the house.

Now, as Julian prepared to ride off into the night to see what he had gotten himself into, the idea was seeming less stellar. The ride would be lonely, and the house would be big, and empty, and that made him think of Elim again. He longed to have someone to join him, on the ride and the exploration of the house, and at that moment Elim was the only person he really knew on that shore. And though he would have never admitted it, the idea of pulling the handsome Norwegian into a haunted house with him in the middle of the night sounded a bit like a particularly saucy penny dreadful, and the concept set his heart to pounding. Life, he decided then and there, should be more like a cheap novel, and he had the rare opportunity to make it so.

All this together was the reason that Elim Garak was awoken at 10 PM by a pounding on his door. He pulled himself groggily from his bed, wondering what the neighbor, or the landlord, or anyone, could want with him at this hour. But when he opened the door, he found the Doctor, immaculately dressed and oddly enthusiastic, a certain sense of joy flashing in his green eyes. Elim jumped at the sight of him.

“Doctor…I…hello. May I ask – um – why…”

“My apologies for waking you, Mr. Garak. It’s something of a long story. May I come in?”

Elim shrugged and stepped aside, and Julian stumbled enthusiastically into the room and invited himself to sit down in a large chair near the smoking fire.

“I have…a house. Only, I’ve never seen it. I bought it – or more, I accepted it, sight unseen. I’ve been told it’s haunted. It’s a few miles from here, in the country. I’ve got a horse and coach, and plan to go out there tonight. I was wondering if you might be willing to join me. I understand you have obligations, but the house promises to be fascinating and complex, and I’d love some company in exploring it. If you’d be willing to leave the University for a week or two, I would appreciate your joining me. I know it’s a bit…unorthodox, but that does seem to be how my life tends to run.”

Elim was standing, dumbfounded, next to the door. He hadn’t moved since Julian had tumbled in. His heart was screaming yes, please, take me with you on this ridiculous, insane adventure. He carefully adjusted his face to a more reasonable response.

“That’s almost too intriguing of an invitation to pass up, Doctor. Give me a few moments to dress and pack.”

Julian smiled broadly.

“Thank you, Mr. Garak. I can’t tell you what this means to me.”

Elim barely contained his smile as he stepped back to his room. There were many other things on his mind, but they were all overtaken by a kind of giddiness he didn’t know how to handle. The Doctor was there, and he was enthusiastic and he was beautiful, and that somehow seemed enough. When Elim returned to the sitting room Julian was still sitting there, silly, joyful expression on his face.

“Doctor, you seem positively giddy at this concept of a haunted house. May I remind you, a student of the arcane, a man who should definitely know better, that there are real forces at play here, maybe forces you don’t want to interfere with.”

Julian stood from the chair and shrugged.

“I know. I do. But it’s so fascinating” – with this extended his arms wide – “and I don’t even know what kind of house this is, but I think it will be massive. Mr. Garak, I am the owner of a mansion, and I intend to enjoy it. You can either enjoy it with me or be grumpy about it. That – that is up to you.”

Elim smiled broadly.

“I will join you, Doctor,” he said, as he stepped to the door. He held it open and motioned Julian through ahead of him. Julian slipped past him with a courteous nod. Elim was sure – absolutely positive – that he had felt the Doctor’s hand graze his lower back as he’d done so. It was quick, and barely a touch, but it happened. Elim felt his skin prickling as he locked his apartment door.

“Have you got a horse, Mr. Garak?” Julian called from ahead of him.

“I do, Doctor. Not to worry.”

The two men met the coach outside. Julian took his place astride Aletheia and waited for his companion to return. He did, quickly, astride his own horse, a stunning pure black Arabian with high ears.

“Almost as beautiful as my own,” Julian goaded gently, reaching out to pat the other horse. “Does the beauty have a name?”

“Apate,” Elim answered.

“A fine name for a fine horse,” Julian responded. He considered himself and his riding partner, and the stagecoach ahead of them.

“Are you ready,” he asked enthusiastically, “to see what I’ve taken on?”

Elim laughed. Talking to Julian was a bit like talking to a child, and it was deeply amusing.

“Never more ready, Doctor.”

* * *

They spend the first half-hour or so of their ride in silence, cold wind at their faces. They were more focused on navigating than anything else, and it took too much concentration to leave much room for conversation. Once they were out of the streets of the town and free among the rolling country hills, it was Elim who broke the silence.

“Can I ask you something, Doctor?”

“You may ask me anything you like.”

“Would you mind terribly if we dropped the titles? I mean you no disrespect, but as we’re riding out in the country together, I think we’ve stepped a bit beyond ‘Mister’ and ‘Doctor.” “and to be truthful, I’d quite like to hear you call me Elim,” he thought, but did not add aloud.

“Of course, Elim,” Julian said, smiling at his companion. Elim’s heart beat a little faster at the sound.

“Thank you, Julian,” he responded. Julian felt what he didn’t know was a similar reaction, his heart beating a little faster at the sound of his name in the other man’s accent.

They crested a hill and Aletheia trotted to a halt, almost screeching to a motionless still. Elim steadied his own horse and turned back to face Julian, who was leaned over the horse, stroking her neck and speaking to her.

“Okay girl, what’s wrong?” he asked softly. “You were fine just a moment ago.” He gently prompted the horse on, but she stood firm.

“Julian –” Elim’s voice interrupted Julian’s conversation with the horse. Julian looked up at his companion. Elim pointed off into the distance.

“I think that might have something to do with it,” he said darkly.

Julian followed Elim’s hand off over the distant hill. Sitting, large and dark on the hill, was a house, unfathomably big and looming.

“Is that what you’ve taken on, Julian?”

Julian nodded slowly, trying to take in the house. He nudged the horse again, but again, she refused to move. He leaned forward against her neck and went back to petting her gently.

“Something about that house spooks you, hm?” he asked the horse. She swished her head and rattled the reins in Julian’s hands. “Okay,” he began. “I know you don’t want to go near that house. But I need you, alright? I need you to get me there.”

“Julian, are you bargaining with your horse?” Elim asked, a hint of amused judgment in his voice.

“I am indeed, and for some reason, I always seem to feel that she understands me.” Julian turned his attention back to the uncooperative horse. “Come on, sweet girl. It’ll be okay. Just get me to the house. I’ll protect you. I promise.”

The horse swished her head again, and slowly, as if openly annoyed about it, plodded on towards the large, dark house. Elim shook his head mockingly, but the truth was he found himself even more in love than he’d been before. The Doctor was apparently also some sort of horse whisperer.

“How did you do that, anyway?” he asked. “It’s not as if the horse speaks English.”

“I’m gentle with her, that’s all. She seemed to trust me from moment one. All I’ve done is try to be worthy of it. I swear to you, I didn’t know a thing about horses before today. Ridden plenty, yes, but I never had to think about it before. But Aletheia is skittish, scared of everything. I have reason to believe she was abused somehow. I certainly don’t know how to comfort horses, but I know how to comfort people. All I did was treat her the same way, and whether it’s the common technique or not it seems to be working.”

Elim was gratified somehow that his assumptions about Julian’s kindness had been wholly accurate. The stagecoach in front of them slowed to a halt, and the driver stood on his bench and called behind him.

“Odd parts, these, Doctor,” he called. “You sure this is the house?”

Julian looked up at the house on the hill.

“I’m sure.”

The driver shrugged and took his seat again, and the plodding caravan rolled on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 3 already? Yes, chapter 3 already. I spent 8 hours as a passenger in a car today and spent most of that time writing. I'm enjoying this so much. I have to go back to work for a week or so before the Christmas break settles in, so chapter 4 won't be up nearly this fast. But enjoy this, hopefully as much as I did writing it! The idea of Julian being something of a horse whisperer came to me in a flash and it felt so right and in character. also: if you're not immediately familiar, I recommend you look up the meaning of Elim's horse's name. Also: Did I make Julian a straight up prince charming on a white horse? I absoloutely did and I feel no. shame.


	4. Details

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This got long. I debated splitting this off into 2 chapters but I felt like it needed to all go together unbroken.

The house got bigger as it got closer. It had seemed large enough from a distance but its true size grew apparent as they approached, looming dark and empty in the distance. The horses got ever more nervous as they approached, even the apparently fearless Apate beginning to hesitate as the house drew closer. But Aletheia seemed terrified and would stop short every hundred years or so, refusing to move. Julian would lean down and stroke her neck and offer some soothing words of encouragement and she’d take off again, only for them to repeat the whole production a few minutes later. Julian finally realized that it wasn’t his words as much as the petting that seemed to calm the horse, so he took to patting her neck constantly as she walked, holding the reins in one hand, the other pressed into the horse’s neck. This seemed to keep her calm enough to stay in motion and put an end to the game of red light, green light she had apparently been playing. Still it was clear that the horse was not happy, and Julian wondered to himself if a house that spooked the horses so badly might not truly contain something he shouldn’t be messing with. The truth was that his own symptoms were growing too, bright flashes of color popping in and out of his peripheral vision and whispers of some old, forgotten language audible in the distance. Another person might have asked Elim if he heard that, but Julian had been living with his own issues for long enough to know that everything was in his head.

The caravan finally reached the start of the long gravel drive that ran up to the house, and the horses – both of them – stopped short again.

“Come on, let’s you not do this too,” Elim pleaded with Apate, apparently deciding to take a page out of Julian’s book and attempting to bargain with the unmoving animal. The horse stood still. Elim glanced over at Julian, who was softly consoling the nervous horse underneath him with all the patience of this being the first time he’d had to do so. He never seemed to get tired of it, Elim noted. He would have expected anyone to get impatient with the animal at this point, and even though he cared deeply for his own horse his patience for the antics was dwindling, this even being the first time his own horse had stopped. But the animal Julian sat astride had acted less like a horse and more like a dying motorcar for most of the journey, yet Julian’s attitude towards her never shifted from affectionate concern, his tone as he spoke to the animal nothing but soft and reassuring. Elim wondered where he might buy himself that kind of patience.

“Too much for you, huh girl?” Julian was softly asking the horse. He ran his hand down the length of her neck. “That’s not enough anymore, is it?” he asked. The horse shook her head in an almost human answer. “I should probably listen to you,” Julian continued. “I know you’re probably trying to tell me something that I should trust. But I don’t think I’m that smart, sweet girl.” Julian took in the length of the driveway and decided it was walkable. “Let’s see,” he said aloud as he climbed off the horse, “if you’ll walk with me.” As soon as his feet were on the ground the horse turned around and pressed her head into him, just like she had done in the alley a few hours before. “Ooookay, sweet girl,” Julian soothed. “It’s alright. But if you wanna stay close to me you’re going to have to follow me, hm?” He took a cautious step towards the house, and the horse, apparently desperate to be close to him, followed, her head hovering over his shoulder. Elim climbed off his own horse and convinced it to walk in a similar fashion.

“That horse sure does seem to like you,” Elim said, looking over at Julian. Julian shrugged.

“And I honestly don’t really know why,” Julian responded.

“I have some theories,” Elim said under his breath.

“What?”

“I was merely thinking that I rather understand why your horse wants to be close to you so badly.”

“…and why is that?” Julian asked, sensing again that there was much more underneath the words than the words themselves.

“I didn’t say that I could explain it, Julian. Only that I understand it,” Elim answered.

Julian surveyed the ground. The driveway was wide, and he and Elim seemed to be hugging their horses to the outside edges of it as if avoiding each other. Even in the dark, he could see something in the other man’s face, something like anxiety mixed with desire. He pulled Aletheia away from the edge of the drive and cut a long diagonal across the gravel until he and the other man were nearly shoulder to shoulder.

“Better?” he asked quietly, in response to the unspoken request.

“Yes. Thank you,” came the equally quiet reply.

There was that flash again, something odd in Elim’s eyes. Purple, maybe? Julian wasn’t entirely sure, but for once he was convinced that something odd he was seeing was really there, not just in his mind. His companion’s eyes really were shifting and purple, somehow clearly visible despite the darkness of the night. Julian found himself staring at them, entranced, and then he blinked, and it was gone. Elim’s eyes were dark blue and perfectly human, and Julian had absolutely no evidence to present of what he was sure he had seen. He quietly filed the incident away in his mind.

The house was massive; a 3 floored, grey stone affair, with a central section and two large wings on either side. It was impossible to ascertain the exact aerial layout of the house from the front, but Julian guessed it was probably an abbreviation of a French country palace style; a wide U shape with wings to the back. The doors were huge and wooden and the whole thing seemed to lord over them, casting a massive shadow in the crisp moonlight. The air around the two men seemed to get colder as they stepped into the shadow of the overwhelming house.

“Where did you say you got this place, Julian?” Elim asked, a hint of concern in his voice.

“Friend of my father’s. He wanted rid of it."

“I think you may want rid of it soon.”

“I think you may be right,” Julian answered hesitantly.

Julian grabbed a lantern from the coach and was the first to hazard a step on the large, curving stairs that led up to the massive front door. He leaned into his foot on the stair, testing its strength.

“It seems sound,” he confirmed. Elim followed. And then, with an almost comical clop, so did Aletheia. Elim looked up at the figure of the horse, who was still clinging right behind Julian.

“Are you quite aware that the horse is still behind you?” he asked. Julian reached up and patted the horse’s nose.

“I am. I don’t know where else to put her, anyway. If the horse wants up the stairs, why stop her?”

Elim shrugged. Julian was right, and it was hard to argue with, as comical as the image of the horses ascending the stairs was. Thankfully, there were railings at the top to tie them to. Bringing the horses up the stairs was one thing, but Elim wasn’t sure he would have been able to maintain his composure had Julian recommended bringing them indoors. The moment was interrupted by the sound of trunks being dropped heavily on the ground. The two men turned to see the coach driver unloading the trunks into the mud, with all the haste he could muster without risking breaking his employer’s belongings.

“I’d have helped you with that, you know,” Julian called down to him.

“No matter, Sir,” the man called up. “If it’s all the same to you two gentlemen I’ll be getting out of these parts now. I don’t feel too kindly about this place. If you ask me I think you’re both touched to be here, but I can’t much tell you what to do.”

Julian took a step down the stairs in the general direction of the coach, planning to pay the driver an extra pound or two for the trouble of his apparent discomfort. But the last trunk hit the ground almost as Julian’s foot touched the step, and the driver was back on his bench before Julian could move any further.

“At least let me compensate you for the strain,” Julian said.

“Nevermindin’ that, Sir. Have a good night, gentlemen. Please be careful.” And with that, he was gone, off into the night at an unreasonable speed. Julian and Elim glanced nervously at each other, even their own knowledge and experience disquieted slightly by the driver’s all too apparent terror. But fear was unproductive in this particular moment, so they turned their attention to the doors.

The massive doors were intricately carved, covered in complex reliefs of confusing, semi-organic shapes around a large central symbol, round and filled with overlapping stars. Julian ran his hand along one of the lines. “Sigil of the Gates?” he asked his companion.

“Definitely.”

Elim paused for a moment as they both stared at the door, both a little afraid to open it. “Usually used…to denote a place of convergence,” he rambled on, as if Julian wasn’t just as aware of that fact as he was. Julian extricated a large skeleton key from his pocket.

“If I may make a suggestion, those doors look at if they haven’t been touched in years. Before you go through the trouble of unlocking it, I suggest you attempt to open it as it sits.”

Julian glanced nervously at Elim. They locked eyes with each other briefly, and Elim extended his hand towards Julian. Julian took it without hesitation, gripping it tightly. Elim felt his heart swelling a little at the feeling of Julian’s hand in his. Julian set his lantern down on the ground, and took hold of one of the large, complex brass handles, and pulled. The door held firm for long enough that both men were beginning to consider the key again before it gave way all at once. Julian lifted the lantern again and extended it into the space. The room was tremendous, bigger on its own than the whole of a reasonable house. It was an entryway, as tall as the house itself, 3 floors to the ceiling, the room something like 80 feet in both dimensions. There were large curving stairs, not unlike those at the front of the house, at the back of the large room, curling up to a 3rd floor balcony that wrapped around the entire top of the room and contained no apparent doors, appearing as if its sole purpose was to provide an overlook to the room. Elim struck a match and tossed it into the center of the room, illuminating the black and white marble floor. Julian stepped into the room cautiously. He let get of Elim’s hand out of necessity, digging around in his pocket for his own box of matches. Elim understood but was surprised by how uncomfortable he felt without the warmth of Julian’s hand in his. The match in the center of the floor quickly burnt itself out and left the two men standing alone, the space illuminated only by the lantern flickering ominously in Julian’s hand. Julian was the first to break the silence. A quiet “Oh” was all he could muster.

“This…is only the entryway, isn’t it,” Elim asked, awe apparent in his voice.

“I think it is.”

“You are the owner of a manor house, Julian.”

Julian took a moment to turn in a slow circle, his lantern illuminating the space.

“I believe I am,” he answered quietly.

Elim surveyed the room and quickly replaced his awe with a more scientific attitude. He desperately tried to ignore the pain building in his stomach. This was the first moment, despite all that had led up to it, that had given him a hint of concern. He’d been so content, ignoring his own secrets and paying attention to Julian. But the aura of this house, whatever it held, seemed as if it might be more powerful than the force of his infatuation.

Julian’s symptoms were growing stronger, too. His vision was getting less and less reliable, especially at the outer edges, and the distant voices were nearing a volume that allowed him to discern at least a word or two. It was still mostly just garbled whispers, but he was sure he picked up the familiar sound of the name of R'lyeh somewhere in it. He wasn’t terribly fond of being reminded that what often felt like simple insanity was in fact the power of something that seemed long ago to have claimed him for its own.

“We should layout a floorplan,” Elim said finally, his businesslike tone interrupting Julian’s distraction.

“Definitely.”

Elim produced a notebook and pencil from his pocket and sketched the square of the large room in which they stood. He paused to count the doors around the room – two on each end and another set of massive wooden doors on the far side of the room that he appraised must have opened to the outdoors again. Julian made a quick copy of the layout in a notebook of his own.

“I’ll take one wing, you take the other?” Julian asked.

“Very efficient,” Elim confirmed. He debated the prospect of wandering off into the dark house alone. His stomach was still twisting, and he was beginning to feel lightheaded. He was suddenly struck with images of himself lain on the floor, unconscious or worse. He was afraid, too, that maintaining his form might simply be too difficult to manage. The aura of the house was affecting him in ways he couldn’t predict. The reasonable reaction, the reaction he would have had in any other moment, would have been to enthusiastically agree to get as far away from anyone else as possible, lest something of his true form be made clear. But for some reason, the building pain and anxiety in his stomach seemed only to be calmed by the idea of staying close to Julian. He had felt so safe when Julian had been holding his hand, and he was beginning to feel that he never wanted to be far from that safety again. He’d never felt anything like it before, and it was intoxicating. There was a paradox in it, that the very anxiety was that of being seen and yet the balm for it was to stay as close as possible not only to _a_ person but to one who knew enough about human anatomy to spot any kinks in his cover even faster than the average human. But none of it changed that he felt that if something were to happen to him it had a high chance of being traumatic, and somehow the idea of being discovered felt less frightening than the idea of being alone. So he steeled himself for honesty, his least favorite task, and spoke.

“Actually, I think it might be best that we stay together. This place does have a bit of an odd air about it. Splitting up feels like a rather bad idea.”

Julian immediately recognized the familiar twist of anxiety in his companion’s face and naturally put it down to the general unease of the house. His interpretation of the cause was off the mark but his understanding of the emotion was pitch-perfect, and he immediately sought to reassure the other man.

“You’re right, of course. We should – ” and then he paused. The sentence was meant to end with “stick together,” but that didn’t feel enough, somehow. He could see Elim’s bluish-violet eyes darting back and forth across the empty room, clearly uncomfortable. Julian amended his phrasing.

“I’ll stay with you.”

 _That_ seemed to make a difference. He was sure he could see Elim’s shoulders relax slightly at the sound of the words.

The reassurance lifted a great weight from Elim’s shoulders and freed his mind to truly examine the house. He considered the shadow of the house and the position of the moon and motioned to the large wooden doors at the other end of the space, and the doorway on that end of the far right wall.

“The moon is back there if the shadow of the house is accurate. Which, in these moments, I’m willing to doubt, but I think the layout of the cosmos should be safe from this place’s distortions. At least, so far.” Elim found himself getting almost as into the wild fancy of the place as Julian was. He crossed the room and pointed at the rear right doorway.

“I’m guessing the layout of this place is fairly uninspired. This is probably a long line of rooms, and the same,” – he pointed to the other doorway on the wall – “over there. If we start on this side and open windows we should have moonlight enough to see, and we can tackle the shadowed side once the sun rises.”

“Wonderful,” Julian said, his own fanciful enthusiasm working its way back to the fore. He set his lantern down in the center of the floor, willing it not to burn out, and joined his companion near the first, closed door. Elim looked enthusiastic and anxious all at once. Julian sensed the other man’s desire to be closer to him, and though he hid it better he shared it completely. He reached out and took Elim’s hand again, and felt it relax into his own.

The doors inside the house were simpler than the massive ones adorning the entrance and fit more with a classical style, white and paneled with gold details. Elim tried the handle nervously and easily pulled open the door, revealing another door on the other side. Double thick doors were fairly standard architecture for a stately home of this size and age but something about the unexpected irony of so tentatively swinging open the door only to see nothing but another door struck both men as absolutely hilarious, and they spent a few minutes in near-hysterical laughter, only able to point vaguely at the closed door and utter parts of sentences like “Your face!” and “when you..!”

“If I may say so, that was just what we needed,” Elim said brightly, as soon as he was able to regain his breath.

“You’re right indeed. That was wonderful,” Julian agreed. He was also thinking that this was the first time he’d really seen Elim laugh, and that his laugh was lovely; endearing and beautiful. He noted, too, a strand of hair that had fallen into his companion’s face, and took it upon himself to reach out and gently push it back into place. Elim felt his skin prickling again as Julian’s fingers brushed his face.

“Should we, perhaps, open the other door now?” Julian asked, as if there hadn’t been an electric moment between them.

Elim stifled a reactive laugh at the thought of the doors again but pushed the second door anyway. The room was pitch dark, only the rough outlines of furniture and floor panels visible.

“Julian, was this home meant to be furnished?” Elim asked, still trying to process the darkness.

“The way it was explained to me, the residents quit it in a grand hurry. So while furniture wasn’t mentioned it doesn’t surprise me that a family of great enough wealth to live in a home like this might be unconcerned about the comparatively small cost of replacing furniture, if they were anxious enough to get out of the place.”

“Fair enough,” Elim agreed, and took a step towards what he was sure was the window. He grabbed hold of a patch of thick fabric he was sure was a curtain and pulled it tentatively to one side.

Moonlight flooded into the room. Had you asked either man, in the seconds before that curtain was pulled back, if they had seen all there was to be seen, they both would have said yes. But now as they stood facing down the spectacle of the room they were standing in, in full light, they found themselves once again beset by pure awe.

The room was richly and thickly furnished. There were few spaces that weren’t occupied by luxurious, extravagant pieces. Even the walls were complex and artistic, large white French panels set with thousands of stucco ornaments. It was Elim who first noticed the salient details of the ornamentation.

“It’s not gold, Julian,” he said softly. Julian turned his attention to the details of the walls and realized his companion was right. The traditional ornamental color for a room of this type was gold, glimmering gold details against the white walls. Neither man had ever seen anything different. These walls were ornamented in much the same way, metallic highlights upon the complex shapes, but the color – it wasn’t gold, but a pinkish, rosy, coppery hue, utterly unfamiliar to both men. The furniture in the room was all peacock blue, thick floral brocades attached to frames either of dark wood or the same coppery, pinkish metallic. Large side tables, complexly carved, painted the same rosy hue and topped with white marble the same as the entry floor, were dotted around the room, each holding a vase or clock or sculpture of unfathomable and obvious value. It was all overwhelmingly beautiful.

“Do you think they’re all like this?” Julian asked.

“I think they may be.”

Julian stepped close to the wall and began studying one of the flourishing details. The complexity of the detail had a way of masking its actual contents, the overall beauty of the whole carefully leading the eye away from the constituent parts. But as Julian traced his hand along the wall panel it was as if it all came clear to him in a single, flashing moment, and he realized all at once the true nature of the forms sculpted into the walls. They were not, like the standard for a wall ornament, fruit, or cherubs, floral details or simple flourishes. Instead, every detail was of complex aquatic origin – fish, whales and octopuses, all of which had an unnatural quality about them. The fish were of no familiar species. The whales seemed slightly off in nature somehow, the octopuses slightly wrong. And tangled up among the almost familiar forms were other things, semi-humanoid things. Some of them were shaped as humans, mostly, with clearly carved scales and fins upon their extremities, and grotesque, hideous faces. The others, the more fishlike ones, were something like mermaids, but much more fishlike, with more of a suggestion of arms and human faces than clear features. Elim noticed this at almost the same moment as Julian, and noticed further, as Julian was occupied with the walls, that the legs of the side tables were in the shape of awful cephalopoid things. Elim knew their shapes immediately as being similar to the great elder Cthulhu. The chairs too contained similar forms, and the brocade fabrics, he realized, weren’t floral; they too were aquatic in nature. Elim happened to glance at the ceiling and saw that it was covered in a sweeping classical mural. This, without question, contained an image of Cthulhu, the great elder thing, painted like a neoclassic Christian figure, one of his massive hands holding up a sphere that appeared to represent water as a concept, the other hand resting upon the globe.

“Doctor, I think you should look up.”

Julian turned to stare at the ceiling and found himself frozen in place.

“So…no more doubts about this place, then,” he said slowly.

“Certainly not.”

The rooms that followed were all similar, each one following a basic theme, with a full suite of impossibly ornamental furniture in a deep, jewel color and the metallic accents on the walls shimmering in something almost impossible but complimentary. First, there was green furniture and golden accents, then yellow and purple, then purple and red. Each room had another of the neoclassic murals on the ceiling, each of another overwhelming eldritch thing in a symbolic position. The murals that followed the first room were of specimens of which even Julian and Elim were unfamiliar, and they were both independently thinking that they needed to make notes of the forms for future study. The walls of the last room also bore paintings of similar style, most of them ocean scenes with images of large ships being brought down beneath the water by tentacles or overwhelming, scaled hands. Julian took to studying the paintings in detail, leaving Elim to focus for the first time on his own emotions. He still felt unwell, and the more unwell he felt the more he wanted to be close to Julian. But “close” in his mind was beginning to feel like not close enough. He wanted to be as close to him as the laws of physics would allow.

There was that paradox again – that fear of being known that was only calmed by putting himself in a position that put him at the greatest risk. His thoughts were interrupted by another twisting in his stomach, and he made an involuntary noise of pain.

“Elim? Are you alright?”

“I’m fine, Julian. Really. Try not to be a doctor for a moment, hmm?”

“I’m not capable of that,” Julian answered. He stepped away from the painting and came close to Elim, pressing his hand to the other man’s forehead. Elim wondered how even a doctor’s sense of professionalism could make him so oblivious to the way his touch would make the other man feel.

“You don’t seem feverish. Are you absolutely sure you’re alright?”

“I assure you, Doctor, I am.”

Julian eyed him untrustingly but had no option but to believe him. Elim felt like he was on fire. He kept thinking of the softness of Julian’s hand against his face and felt safe in the assumption that every inch of the Doctor was just as soft and warm as that hand. He wanted nothing more than to find out. And then he was gripped by a different brand of fear – he wondered, as he considered the way the Doctor had spoken to the coach driver and the bartender and his horse, if there was nothing in the Doctor’s mind even vaguely like what was in his own. Had he simply wildly misinterpreted the kindness of a very kind man? He had to find some way to confirm, some way to ask. How, he considered, does one ask a question, an important question, when the very act of asking that question of the wrong person or at the wrong time carried such high risk? Maybe Julian was simply that sweet of a man, and felt nothing for him, and would be struck with such offense at the suggestion that he would never speak to Elim again. That was an overwhelmingly, unbearably painful thought. And then he remembered the bar – that first moment, and the look in the Doctor’s eyes. And then he knew.

“Julian?” he asked nervously. Julian eyed him expectantly.

“Are you simply kind to people who buy you drinks, or do you really like absinthe?”

Julian understood. He had known when that question had been asked hours before that there was more to its meaning, but as he stared into the nervous eyes of his companion, he suddenly understood its full depth.

“Very much,” Julian answered softly.

There was a pause. It was a brief pause that seemed to last forever, one of those suspended moments where both halves of something about to be are debating their decisions. And then Julian stepped close to Elim, and took the other man’s face in his hands, and kissed him. Deeply. Passionately. Elim was overwhelmed with a wash of shocked relief. Julian had been receptive, certainly, but Elim had been sure, even as he initiated whatever was coming, that he felt much more for the Doctor than the Doctor felt for him. But if the depth of the kiss was anything to go by, Julian had been thinking the same things he had, harboring every inch of the same desires, all along. The two blindly fell onto one of the ornate sofas. Elim pulled his body towards Julian, and could feel Julian doing the same. The air was cold but Julian was warm, every inch as soft and warm as he had expected, and the sofa was velveteen and this was everything he ever wanted.

The kiss seemed to last forever, only deepening as it went. But there was the fear, again. This time less fear, and more of a guilt. Elim was afraid of what Julian would say if he figured anything out, afraid of what he would do, afraid of losing him. He was afraid of what would happen to him if the scientific community found out what he was, even if only Julian found out. Julian seemed good and kind and compassionate, but Elim knew as well as anyone that even the kindest scientists weren’t renowned for the way they treated their specimens. As he debated the prospect of letting himself get that close to the Doctor, letting a man with that kind of understanding of anatomy feel his body, he was reminded that he didn’t even know how convincing the form he was living in was. He felt a bit like a half-blind painter, presenting a painting he could not see to a panel that would either judge it perfect or order him dead. And so, with great effort, he pulled himself away from Julian’s soft lips. Julian studied his companion’s face with concern.

“Are you alright?” he asked softly. “Is this not what you wanted?”

“No, Doctor. This is exactly what I wanted. I only feel…there are some things you should know. And yet I can’t tell you any of them, for reasons I am unable to explain. I can’t let you do this, Julian. I can’t pull you into this. I wish I could tell you more. I simply can’t. But I would be dishonest to let you take this any further.”

Elim was shocked when Julian reached out and cupped his face gently in his hand.

“Mister Garak,” he began affectionately. “It may surprise you to know that I’m fully aware that you’re hiding something. I know you’re not who you say you are. I know your name might be fake and your stories may be false and your accent affected. But I simply don’t care. There are lots of things you can fake, especially on a broad scale. But there are also some things even the most skilled actor can’t hide. You may be someone completely different in facts than the person you’ve made yourself out to be. But I still feel that I know who you are in all the ways that matter. So I don’t much care if your name is fake or your accent affected, or even” – Julian paused and debated whether he would admit what he saw, but went for it – “if your eyes happen to be purple. Do me the honor of believing me when I say I am perfectly sure that I love you anyway. Whatever you are.

“Now kiss me.”

And with that they pulled each other into a passionate kiss again. Clothes were stripped from bodies and cast to the floor between deep kisses. Elim was almost overwhelmed by the feeling of Julian’s hand running up his back. He pulled himself as close to the Doctor as he could. He found that every inch of his skin that touched Julian’s made him feel that much safer, that much more secure. Julian, too, was living in absolute joy. The whole thing felt exactly like a saucy, cheap novel, and Elim too was soft and warm, and Julian couldn’t help thinking that this was exactly what he had hoped for. They managed to pull away from each other long enough to take a breath, and Julian took the opportunity to admit what he had been thinking.

“You know, this is what I was hoping for all along,” he said, a smile creeping across his face.

“Do you mean to tell me” Elim retorted, a hint of mocking, false annoyance in his voice, “that you pulled me up here, to a cold haunted house in the middle of the night, with an ulterior motive?”

Julian felt warmth rising in his cheeks. Elim pulled him close, pressing their chests and foreheads together.

“Doctor, I’m rather proud of you. I wouldn’t have thought you had it in you.”

Julian grinned and pulled Elim into another deep, soft kiss.

“My dear, there’s a lot of things about me that you wouldn’t expect,” he whispered. “But you’ve got all night to learn about that.”

* * *

The sun pouring into the open window woke Elim as gently as anything could wake a person. He opened his eyes slowly, and momentarily hovered in the discomfort of not knowing where he was. But then he realized that the soft shape beneath him was a man, and he remembered every inch of the previous night. Julian sleepily wrapped his hand around the shoulders of the man who was curled up on top of him. Elim felt overtaken by the same warm safety he had felt the night before, and was now absolutely sure he never wanted to be away from it. He thought about the stories he had heard, of people who made love and deeply regretted it the next morning. But as he looked up at the almost angelic face of the Doctor sleeping beneath him, he was sure that he had never regretted anything less.

Julian opened his eyes and stared down at the man who was curled up on top of him. He felt his heart swelling. Elim had seemed so powerful at their first meeting but he now saw the other man for what he really was, a little afraid, a little soft. He found it impossibly adorable, and wrapped his arms even tighter around the sleepy form of the other man. Elim rested his head gently against Julian’s chest.

“Good morning,” Julian said softly, running a hand through Elim’s hair. Elim squirmed a little, like a cat bedding down on a blanket, apparently supernaturally content.

“Good morning yourself,” Elim replied sleepily. They both laughed. They stayed that way, holding each other for a long few minutes, content only to be close to each other. And then they both seemed to realize at once that they finally had a chance to get a good look at the room in the light, and begrudgingly sat up and considered the room they were sitting in, seeing it for the first time in the daylight.

“I suppose nothing killed us, on our first night in the house,” Elim said.

“I’m rather shocked, honestly.”

“As am I.”

Elim was gripped, suddenly, by a curiosity he felt that he might now have a chance to satiate.

“Julian…all that behind us, can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“What really happened to you, in the desert? I feel safe saying that we’re in this, whatever it is, together, now. But if I’m going to help you, I need to know what happened. In detail, Doctor.”

Julian rubbed his face with his hands and leaned back against the arm of the sofa, apparently making himself comfortable.

“I think you’re right. We’re in this together, now, whatever it is. So yes. I will tell you the story.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I told you all, I did. This is not a slow burn.


	5. Origin Story

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Took me a long, long while to write, but it's here. Enjoy!

The sand was baking. The sun blazed down upon the ground, unfettered by trees, or clouds, or anything that might provide the atmosphere even a brief respite from the heat.

A woman, tan and elderly, stood outside her home, squinting against the sun. The house was a small, round, thatched affair, simple but large, and the scent of the flatbread her husband was cooking inside floated past her on the hot breeze.

She was watching a camel – she was fairly sure it was a camel. She hoped it was a camel; if it wasn’t, she was going to have a number of questions. But right now it only appeared to be a speck, its movement barely discernible against the glaring sky. She saw a much smaller speck beside it, and breathed a sigh of relief. She forced herself to go back to her work and resisted the urge to watch the distant figures slowly shambling towards her.

“ _Jadda!”_

The woman looked up just in time to catch the boy who was running at her at speed.

“ _Habibi_ _…_ my darling…” she said softly, and pulled the boy into her arms.

“Is _Jaddi_ cooking?” the boy asked.

“You know he is.”

“I missed you today.”

“I missed you too, Juju. You scare me when you do that.”

“It’s just the desert, _Jadda_. There’s nothing out there to hurt me. There’s nothing out there at all.”

“Only the sun, my sweet boy. Only the sun. What if you got lost? This desert claims lives.”

The boy replied with the classic defensive tone of a child.

“I don’t get lost!”

“I know, Julian. I know. Have mercy on your Grandmother’s heart, though. Stay safe.”

Julian nodded and hugged his grandmother’s neck again. She was concerned about him. She was always concerned about him. He was a little too thin and a little too smart and a little too much, and she loved him a little too much for her own good. It’s good, she thought as she watched him carefully pen up the camel, to be ever so slightly unbothered about children. Children get into trouble and make mistakes and get hurt, and usually in ways that aren’t serious. So it was best if you didn’t care, just a little, lest you get bent out of shape over every little injury or mistake. But that boy was her heart, and he terrified her, running loose in the desert with a camel. He was a child of the city in his heart, though, and the freedom of the desert seemed to sit well with him, so she was loathe to stop him. His hobbies were dangerous, but he seemed to need them.

He returned to her side and studied her work, a large woven rug laid out across the sand.

“It's beautiful. Who’s it for?” he asked.

“Some kind of royal. I don’t remember his name.”

“You do work for the King now?”

“Apparently I do,” she said, studying the rug.

“I’d like to meet the King.”

“Maybe you will one day, Juju. Maybe you’ll be famous, and the King will want to meet you.”

Julian mused over the thought. His fantasy was interrupted by grandmother’s voice, as she reacted to the sudden appearance of her husband.

“Faiz! That looks wonderful.”

Faiz took a moment to softly kiss his wife’s cheek and distributed enough food to occupy all their mouths and shut down the conversation until the sun finally began to sink behind the dunes. The oppressive heat quickly began to give way to bone-chilling cold, and everyone retreated indoors and lit a large fire. Julian sat himself next to it and pitched small sticks and leaves into it absentmindedly.

“Do you like living in the city, Juju?” Faiz asked finally, breaking the silence.

“It’s fine,” Julian replied, never looking away from the fire. “I think I like it out here with you better, though.”

Faiz gently ruffled his grandson’s hair. Julian was such an odd, sweet child, and though Faiz was less taken to worry than his wife he still harbored some concern for the boy. He left his grandson by the fire and joined his wife on the other side of the room.

“I worry for him, Rahima,” he said, being careful to speak too softly for the boy to hear.

“You know I do as well, my love.”

None of this was new or novel but both grandparents felt an intense, hovering discomfort neither could account for. Julian had been like this since he was old enough to be allowed out of sight, and while it had always given his caregivers pause, none of them had thought that much of it, simply marking him down as a little precocious and an oddly good navigator. But now in this moment, his grandparents felt concern for him on a new level, and neither was sure quite why.

Faiz and Rahima had built a habit over many years of rising before the sun, the gentle light of dawn being nearly the only comfortable temperature of the day, and they had accidentally passed this habit on to their grandson. So when Rahima woke the next morning she found Julian, looking happy and bleary-eyed and somehow impossibly small and fragile, perched contentedly by the smoldering ashes of the previous night’s fire, greedily consuming a fig. She wondered how a child could eat so much and be so thin.

“Off into the desert again today, Juju?”

Julian grinned at his grandmother, fig juice dripping down his chin.

“Of course, _Jadda_.”

She wanted to tell him no, don’t do it, stay here with me where you’re safe. She couldn’t shake the feeling that would be unfair to him, and that she shouldn’t burden the small boy. He already looked a little anxious at her question. So she simply smiled, and did her best to hide her very adult concern.

“Do you not want me to go?” Julian asked, all the worry of a sweet, anxious child evident in his voice.

“Not at all, my darling. I want you to do whatever you like. I’m sorry if I worried you. Off into the desert with you, and be safe, Juju.”

Julian smiled and nodded, and took off out the door, half-eaten fig still in his hand.

“Allah protect you, Julian” Rahima whispered.

Julian was free. Sand in all directions, rapidly warming wind at his face. He breathed in the clean air and smiled. The city was fine, but this was the best place to be, as far as his little heart was concerned. Clean air and sand and a friendly camel. Well, friendly to him, and that was what mattered. The truth was the camel didn’t seem to listen to anyone but Julian, but that was alright with him. He always felt rather special with a camel that almost seemed to be his own. He hoped, if he was lucky, that he would find something interesting today. Each day he picked a direction, and headed off, eager to see what he could find. His grandparents’ home was far on the outskirts of the city, far enough away to be unquestionably rural but still closer to the city than to anything else. The city had been there for 1000 years already at least, in the same place, which meant people had been living in this edge of the desert for almost that long. And that meant ruins – lots and lots of them. Julian was getting to the point where he knew where all of them were and mostly visited his favorites over and over again. Often they were complex, clay and stone playgrounds, that Julian could spend hours on, treating them like jungle gyms, honing his balance and gymnastic skills on them. Others were undiscovered pyramids with tunnels deep within them, and Julian would spend cool dark hours exploring them, sometimes uncovering objects he knew, even with his child’s knowledge, were impossibly valuable. But he felt somehow that taking any of it would be dishonest, and he really didn’t have any need for money, so he kept to exploring without taking.

Today’s direction was one he was sure he’d never been in before, directly perpendicular and to the left of the rising sun. Instead of exploring or re-exploring a ruin he already knew, he was in the mood to find something new and different. What it would be, he wasn’t sure. He and his uncooperative camel ambled for hours, the sun rising and beginning to bake the ground again. This direction seemed particularly barren, and Julian was beginning to think that he should give up on this path and turn back when he spotted, very distantly, a series of what appeared to be towers silhouetted against the blue sky. _That_ was interesting, he thought, and gently nudged the camel to go a little faster.

As the towers came into view, their nature became clearer. They were reddish stone, roughly in a circle, but with a squarish portion at the back.

“What do you think that is?” Julian asked the camel. He knew it couldn’t respond, but that never stopped him. And then the towers were right there in front of him, at an almost impossible speed, as if the ground itself had heaved up and moved him there.

There were 16 towers, all in a circle, with a couple out of the pattern at the back, taller at the back and becoming gradually shorter as they approached the front of the circle. They were deep red stone and covered completely in complex hieroglyphics. The whole thing loosely suggested wings or arms, as if something was reaching around to wrap its arms about a circular platform in the middle of the circle.

Julian dismounted his camel and tentatively placed a foot between the closest two towers. He breathed a sigh of relief when nothing occurred, and stepped further into the circle, studying the platform in the middle. It seemed like a stage of some kind, raised and round, inlaid with complex mosaic images of monsters, all in colors and odd shapes, the most unusual and imaginative monsters Julian had ever seen. He was studying the mosaics carefully when he noticed that the stone seemed warm, somehow, as if recently warmed by a fire. All of Julian’s thoughtful caution seemed to leave him at once, and he stepped up onto the platform.

All at once it was night, a pure black night, no moon in the sky, not a hint of light to be seen except for stars – what seemed like millions and millions of them. There were thousands more stars than had ever been visible from any point on earth. It was as if the sky was papered with them. Julian screamed. Whatever he had been expecting to find, night falling in the space of a step had not been it. All the more wrong it was still blazing hot. Julian could feel his skin sizzling in the light of a sun that was plainly not in the sky. He was terrified now, his small heart pounding unbearably in his chest. His reckless bravery was gone and all that was left was a small boy, frightened beyond words. He could have stepped off the platform and simply run away, but the fear was louder than logic. Unable to find it in himself to do anything other than cry, the small boy curled up on the platform, under those millions of stars, and wept.

_Human._

A voice spoke. It less spoke than existed. Julian lifted his head and looked around for the source of the voice, but there was still no living thing in sight except himself and his apparently unbothered camel.

_We are a human._

The boy found his fear being quickly replaced by curiosity and sat up on the platform. The voice didn’t seem to actually be speaking as much as it was simply there in his head. There wasn’t much left to do, Julian thought, but respond to it.

“Hello?” he asked the air.

 _“…can hear us?”_ the voice asked, a hint of disbelief in its booming vastness.

“I can hear you, whoever you are.”

“ _I am not like the others.”_

Julian barely resisted responding with a sarcastic “obviously.”

“I see that you’re not.”

“ _You are not.”_

“Who are we talking about, here?”

“ _Us.”_

“I don’t understand,” Julian said quietly. He was getting more confused by the moment.

“ _We would not.”_

Julian was bewildered but found it irresistible to continue the confusing conversation.

“Who are you?” he asked the voice.

“ _We are called Cthon.”_

“I am called Julian. What is a…kon?”

_”Cthon. You cannot understand what I am.”_

“I would like to try,” Julian said softly. He had no idea what he was speaking to, but he was already looking for ways to help this mystery being.

The star flooded sky filled completely with a fading and shifting purplish light.

“ _Seek him!”_ the voice commanded in a deafening boom, louder than anything before.

“Who?”

_“I am parted. Seek him.”_

“Who?”

_“He who loves you.”_

“My father?”

_“He who loves you is and is not yet.”_

“I really don’t understand,” Julian repeated.

_“It seems a nice human. Help me.”_

“How can I help you?"

_“Seek him. You are parted.”_

“I don’t think I can help you, Cthon. I’m sorry.”

The purplish glow in the sky brightened and flashed. The ground began to rumble, like an impending earthquake. Julian was sure the horizon was lowering. But no – the horizon was unmoving, but he was being lifted. He looked down and realized that the platform he was sitting on was raising from the ground. He quickly went to climb off of it before it reached a height that would make jumping unsafe, but when he looked down again he was thousands of feet from the ground, as if on top of a massive skyscraper. Down below him was laid out a city, in shifting colors, buildings made up of odd and bizarre angles. Julian screamed. He saw a shifting out of the corner of his eyes and looked up into the sky to see a thing, growing, shifting, morphing. It was like a butterfly, and like a snake, and like a fish, and like so many things all at once, with a fishlike head at the end of a snakelike neck, tremendous colorful wings extending above it. It was unfathomable in scale, and lunged its horrible, fishlike head towards the boy, who was still screaming at the top of his tiny lungs, mortal terror overwhelming him completely.

“ _You will find him. You will find him for us. It will find him for us and he will have no peace until it does!”_

* * *

Rahima saw, as she saw most evenings, the slow shape of a camel, ambling towards her, and next to it, the tiny figure of a boy. She smiled to herself. Every evening that Julian returned home in one piece was a win, in her mind, and she patiently waited for the boy to reach the house. But the next thing she knew he was running towards her, at full speed, tripping over his feet in the sand. She saw as he grew closer, that her grandson was sobbing, tears pouring down his tiny cheeks. She caught him in her arms.

“ _Habibi_ …what’s wrong? What happened to you?” she asked. There was no response. She knelt to look her grandson in the eyes and took his small face in her hands, rubbing the tears off his cheeks with her thumbs. “Are you hurt?” she asked softly. “Did something happen to you, my darling?”

Julian nodded and wrapped his arms around his grandmother’s neck, burying his face in her chest. He could see that city stretching out beneath him every time he closed his eyes, the feeling of being hundreds of feet above the ground coursing through his body anew. All he wanted was security, and he wasn’t sure of anywhere he could find it other than in his grandmother’s arms.

Rahima thought it seemed almost as if the boy was trying to disappear into her. She lifted him into her arms and started to stand, but Julian reacted with obvious panic as soon as she lifted his feet from the ground. She considered questioning him about the reason, but decided that it could wait, and sat down on the ground, legs folded beneath her. Julian wasted no time in curling up in her lap, wordless, still weeping. She understood quickly that the best thing she could do for the boy was to hold him and ask as few questions as possible. She gently ruffled her grandson’s hair. She thought, perhaps, if he felt safe enough, he would eventually tell her what had happened to him, and that it was probably best to let him tell it in his own time.

An hour passed, then two. Rahima was beginning to become deeply concerned. Julian had stopped weeping but was still curled motionless in her lap. She thought at one point he must have been asleep, but his eyes were the size of saucers, staring into the middle distance.

“Would you like to go to bed, my darling? Maybe some sleep is all you need. You’ll feel better in the morning,” she suggested. Almost robotically, Julian uncurled himself from her lap, walked slowly into the house, and curled up again on his own bed. Rahima pulled the blankets up over him.

The next few days were long and filled with anxiety. Rahima was relieved to see that her grandson seemed to be getting better, little by little, but the rate of improvement was much slower than she would have preferred. The next morning she found him uncurled, lying on his back, staring up at the ceiling. She was relieved to find that he actually slept the next night, and the next day he seemed at least to move, a little, even if only to find a more comfortable position in the bed. The day after that he began to sit up again and seemed to understand and pay attention to what was happening around him.

Rahima was awoken the next morning by a small child crawling into her bed. She fought back tears of relief as she wrapped her arm around the small boy, who, she thought, was finally beginning to act like a human again.

 _“Jadda?”_ he asked quietly.

“Yes, my darling?”

“…I don’t think I will go into the desert anymore.”

“Do as your soul desires, my darling.”

From that moment it was almost as if nothing had happened. But every now and then, in a quiet moment, someone would see Julian, staring blankly into the distance, watching something – no one knew quite what – that wasn’t there.

* * *

Julian Bashir was sitting next to his father’s body. In his mind, it was more like he was sitting next to his father. Death is a hard concept to internalize, even for a doctor.

“Julian?”

The question came from his father’s doctor, a lifelong friend of them both. Julian turned to face the older man, who was studying him intently.

“What do you plan to do, Julian?”

“I don’t know.”

Never had truer words been spoken. He didn’t know. He felt as if he didn’t know anything. All his knowledge had been useless to save his father, so what was the point of any of it?

The following days passed in a painful haze. Julian spent his time wandering aimlessly through his father’s massive, quiet, empty house. It felt so different from what he remembered. He had never realized how much of the warmth he remembered in the home had come from being surrounded by people he loved, and who loved him. Now the house was empty and lonely and cold, and Julian was feeling an emotion he was certain was fear. He felt a bit like he had no right to be afraid. He was comfortable, with a good life and a good career. He had no justification for being afraid, but he was. For the first time in his life, he was alone – really, truly alone. Everyone who had loved him was gone now, and there was only him, in the barren, cold house.

There wasn’t much sleep to be had those nights. He tossed and turned and thought about his father and his grandparents and his childhood and those long hot days in the desert, and tried desperately not to think about the incident. That too was getting harder and harder. The flashes seemed more intense than they ever had before. But more than that the desert seemed to be calling him, beckoning him to return. He hadn’t been out into it since the incident, and had thought then that he never would again. But now there was a very real pull back to the sand. He desperately tried to block it out.

Thankfully there was the business of selling the house and all the belongings in it. Executing an estate was an excruciating process but he was almost grateful for it. It was enough to occupy his mind, mostly, and keep him from thinking about exactly how alone he was. The house sold quickly, and he made up his mind to spend one last night there before it passed into the hands of a stranger. However cold and alone the house made him feel, it was still the house he grew up in, and he figured it would be best to savor one last image of it before he lost it forever.

He was unprepared for the dreams. Every time he began to drift into sleep he was haunted again by the thing, the giant, dragonesque thing that had spoken to him so many years ago, and by the feeling of being up so high above that inscrutable alien city. When he awoke he was curled tightly on his bed, as if his body was reverting to its old ways, seeking a familiar position. He had been reminded again of exactly what the thing had said to him, and the way it had said it. It had almost seemed pleading. He had been too young and too afraid to understand before, but he remembered now that it had asked for his help. Those had been its exact words, in fact – “Help me.” The pull was overwhelming now; the sense of something drawing him back out into the desert. He wanted to blame it on the supernatural, but the truth was it was mostly his own mind. He would have never admitted it to himself, but he was in desperate need of a purpose, and age and wisdom had slowly chipped away his terror of the desert thing. He spent so much of his life trying to care for people, and almost against his will he found that care extending itself towards the monster. When he had been a boy that creature had felt so large he could barely hold it in his mind, but now it seemed small enough to fit within his arms.

* * *

Julian squinted against the sun. He was perched atop a hastily hired camel on the very outside fringes of the city, staring into the beige expanse beyond. The path had seemed so clear before, but now that he was facing down the seemingly infinite expanse of sand, he was beginning to question his decisions. The area still felt familiar to him, all of his childhood trips to his grandparents’ hovering in his mind. With no real directional intuition, he set off in the direction that he felt must have been where their home was – or at least, where it had been. As the city grew further away, he became more and more sure that he was moving in the correct direction. Somehow the dunes themselves felt familiar, and the sparsely placed homes that dotted these furthest fringes of habitation set off memories in his mind.

It was exactly at the moment that he was beginning to think that he had to be nearing the house that he saw it, a small, familiar object on the horizon. He hadn’t been to this place since Rahima had died, and he was unprepared for the emotions being there again would awaken. By the time he actually reached the house, there were tears beginning to sting his eyes. The house hadn’t been touched since his grandmother had died, and every detail was exactly as he remembered it. He could remember her so clearly as he stepped inside. She had always been the living definition of unconditional love. Julian remembered everyone who met her remarking on it. He hadn’t been the only person who loved her, and she had developed a reputation for being a ready ear and a loving arm for anyone who needed one. Julian felt her absence especially keenly in his loneliness. He realized, as his foot fell on something soft, that one of her carefully made rugs was still laid on the floor, and he collected it into his arms. He made a quick search of the house for any other heirlooms and returned to the blazing heat outside with his arms full of memories. It was a cathartic detour, but he was truly only distracting himself – willfully – from the actual problem at hand. All he had were shaky, hazy memories of a place it would be almost impossible to find. He saw a bright flash pop at the edge of his vision, and with it popped an idea.

Julian climbed back upon his camel, closed his eyes, and spoke to the sand itself.

“I know you’re still in my head,” he dared the air. “Do you want to go another round? I’m up for it if you are, but you’re going to have to help me along.”

The camel took off on its own.

“Thank you,” Julian said aloud.

The towers came into view exactly as he expected. The flashes were becoming overwhelming. His vision was more flashing colors than actual sight. He was almost surprised by how accurate his memory of the monument had been. The towers and the large platform in the center looked precisely as they did in his memory. He was almost overcome with flashbacks as he placed a cautious foot between the two forwardmost towers, stepped forward, and knelt to examine the mosaics on the center platform. They were more beautiful than he had been able to appreciate when he was a child. The shards of glass, or precious stone or whatever they were, were impossibly fine, with almost painterly detail, and the images required close examination before it was clear they were mosaics at all. The creatures depicted were of no earthly shape, all looking like hybrids of other types of things, fish-people and squid-birds and giant moth-things with massive wings. Lacking a pencil or paper, he did his best to etch the images into his mind for later reference. He steeled himself for the experience he knew he was about to have and stepped up onto the platform.

Again, the world turned black, pitch dark night, millions of stars in the sky. But this time, Julian was ready for it.

_“You have returned.”_

Julian straightened. He had the irrational desire to make himself appear as powerful as he could to face the thing down.

“I have.”

_“We knew it would. I saw you here again.”_

“I think I know better than to ask you how that’s possible.”

_“Why have you come?”_

Julian peered into the empty sky. He could feel the sensation of being up very high, and did his best to resist the urge to look down at the city he knew was thousands of feet beneath him.

“If we are going to have this conversation,” Julian began, “the least you can do is make yourself visible.”

Julian watched and waited. The sky grew hazy and purple, and the thing appeared not from over the horizon but faded into view from the air itself, as if it had always been there, and apparently had the capacity to make itself invisible. Julian’s breath caught in his throat as he was faced again by the ancient, hovering dragon of a creature.

 _“Why?”_ it hissed again

“Because you are all I have left.”

_“That is not a standard human response.”_

“Every other being I had a connection to is gone. Now there is only you.”

_“There is not only me.”_

“ ‘He who loves me,’ I remember. You should know I still don’t know what that means.”

_“You are wise. You will understand. You still have not told me why.”_

“It’s as I said: you’re all I have left.”

_“There is more.”_

Julian paused.

“You asked for my help. I seek a purpose.”

_“You have come to help us?”_

“I have.”

_“Seek him.”_

“I’m going to need a little more detail than that.”

_“I am parted. Seek him.”_

Julian’s eyes lit with sudden understanding.

“You! _You_ are parted. It’s not someone who loves me, it’s someone who loves _you_!”

_“As I said. Seek he who loves you.”_

“You’ve been separated from something – or someone. You want to be rejoined with someone.”

_“This place was sea, and I was together. This place is sand and I am not together.”_

Julian nodded. It was all beginning to make sense.

“You’re supposed to be in the sea. Your…partner is still in the sea?”

_“We are.”_

“And you need to be in the sea too.”

_“You do.”_

“You need me to take you to the sea. How, exactly? You seem omnipotent. Can you not take yourself to the sea?”

_“The sand has weakened us. You need water.”_

“Right. How, precisely, do I…move you?”

_“All will be clear.”_

And with that, it was gone. The thing, the city, the stars. Julian was standing, alone, on the platform, in the middle of the desert. At his feet, though, was now a large, iridescent crystal. He lifted it carefully to the sun. The voice spoke in his hand.

_“This now holds all of us. Take us to the sea.”_

“What part of the sea, exactly?” Julian asked the air.

_“You are wise. You will learn. Do you actually plan to do this, human? I harmed you. I harm you. There is no reason for you to do this.”_

Julian tucked the crystal into his jacket pocket.

“I don’t think it’s possible for you to understand this,” he said to the air, “but I am in pain. I cannot help myself. Therefore, the only balm for the pain is to help someone else.”

_“Odd, human. Odd human.”_

Julian smiled to himself.

“So I’ve been told.”


	6. Closer

“So – let me get this straight – this started because you’re trying to _help_ the thing?” Elim asked. He was grappling with the idea that the Doctor had been faced by an outer thing, and that his first reaction had been, apparently, to try to help it. He felt the pain in his body, now more of an mild ache, and considered whether he should just tell Julian the truth now, and hope for the best. It would take the edge off, he thought, if he got this over with now. It would probably hurt less than it would if let himself get even closer to Julian. He looked back at his Doctor, who was perched on the sofa, once again immaculately dressed, happily consuming the large breakfast that was spread out in front of him as if he hadn’t a care in the world. Julian was so enthusiastic about everything, unlike anyone Elim had met. Elim felt the love in his heart growing a little stronger. It seemed like it did every time he looked at Julian, and Elim decided that the pain of losing him was already too much to bear. He’d have to deal with reality at a later time.

Julian, for his part, was oblivious to the battle that was going on in his lover’s mind. He was enthusiastically eating a slice of buttered toast and being grateful he had the presence of mind to bring a large amount of food with him. He nodded in Elim’s direction.

“That’s correct.”

“And you see things – like flashes of light. And sometimes hear things.”

“Also correct. They intensify when I get close to places that are connected to the beings somehow. I can’t be certain, of course, but I suspect that the symptoms aren’t passively caused. I believe they’re deliberately inflicted by Cthon. That is what it said to me – that I’d have no peace until I found who it was looking for. I think it’ll let me go if I get it what it wants.”

Elim lifted a slice of toast and considered Julian’s theory as he ate.

“It’s solid logic, Julian,” he finally began, “but you don’t have much to go on. I assume this is how you ended up studying the field.”

“Exactly. You’re correct – I didn’t have much information. I figured that if I learned as much as I could about the beings and the culture surrounding them in general, maybe I would run across something that could point me in the right direction.”

“All very sound. Tell me then, Doctor, what you have so far. I may be able to help.”

Julian noticed that the title of “Doctor” had shifted in tone. Elim had started off calling him that in a tone of distant respect, as if it was a way to keep him at arm’s length, as if it would prevent their relationship from morphing into anything that either of them would have to grapple with. But now as he said the word there was affection behind it. It sounded like a pet name. Julian thought it was rather sweet. He ungracefully stuffed the last of his toast into his mouth – Elim thought _this_ was rather sweet – and began detailing the information he’d gathered.

“Everywhere this ‘Cthon’ is referenced, it’s in conjunction with light and fire. It seems to be a light deity, but the references don’t include the concepts of purity and goodness that light is usually related to. It gets a single reference in the English _Necronomicon_ as ‘the living light of death.’ Latin translation is subjective of course and the original Latin is closer to ‘the light of life and death.’ Either way, the striking detail is the presentation of light more as a neutral and powerful force than a generic representation of goodness. The complexity of interpretation is unique. It gets a mention in the _Liber Ivonis_ as a similar deity. The _Kitab Al'aemaq,_ The Book of Depths, gave me the most information. It describes Cthon as being in a pairing with another deity, a being called Psyith.”

“ _The burning darkness,”_ Elim interrupted enthusiastically.

“Precisely. It was described with the same complex neutrality. It was seen as the living concept of darkness. But they found both good and evil in it – the book specifically mentions it as being the force which prevents the growth of crops and which provided relief from the sun. It seems like the worshippers who wrote the books had a very complex understanding of right and wrong.”

“They certainly did,” Elim agreed. “The idea of elder gods being sources of neutral power to be honored and respected, but not necessarily feared, is a theme which runs throughout most of the writings. Those who worshipped them saw them as simultaneously unfathomable and relatable. Your beloved _Liber Ivonis_ says something like ‘It is not to fathom the doings of the outer, but their motives run as those of earth.’ One of the more complex interpretations of gods in any ancient culture.”

“All I can assume,” Julian continued, “is that the creature Cthon is seeking must be this ‘Psyith.’ The writings described them as two halves of the same creature. The term the book used was ‘halved soul.’ That matches well with the way Cthon spoke – like it was in pain. Whatever the connection between the two creatures, I suspect it’s more like one creature split in half than two fully separate entities.

“Even with the descriptions of them as light and darkness, they both appear to be water dwellers. ‘ _This place was sea, and I was together,_ ’ it said to me. The area that makes up that part of the desert was the Tethys Sea something like 7 million years ago. My theory right now is that, as the sea dried up, Psyith stayed in the ocean, and Cthon got trapped in the desert. They apparently get their power from the water, and being trapped in the desert, Cthon was robbed of the powers it would have been able to use to rescue itself. They probably inhabited the Tethys sea together; the Book of Depths was originally located in the Gulf of Aqaba which would have likely been part of the Tethys sea and probably inhabited by peoples familiar with the creatures of that sea. That particular text seems the most detailed on the creatures, so it only makes sense that it was written by peoples who were close to them.”

“Even my most ambitious estimates for dating the outer god proto-culture put its height about 150,000 years ago. Doctor, if you’re right about this, and that book was written when the sea of Tethys existed, we’re talking about an intelligent culture exactly…6.8 million years before the first humans.”

“I’m aware. That’s honestly something I haven’t had the chance to deal with the implications of yet.”

 _Neither have I,_ Elim thought. He was deeply enjoying pretending he wasn’t already wholly aware of everything that was being said and implied. He wished that he actually knew where Psyith was. It was about the only thing he didn’t know, and he’d never wanted to help someone so badly.

“So where is our friend Psyith, then?” He asked. “Do you have any idea?”

“I’m not sure. The last arcane references are contemporary with the Book of Depths. A lot can change in 7 million years.”

“Psyith is described as an isopoid being. Have you located any reports of isopods of unfathomable size?”

“A few?” Julian answered, with a gesture of uncertainty. “Most of them seem to be about actual giant isopods. There’s a collection from the south Atlantic, though, that seems unique. Ships who’ve been near the so-called Bermuda Triangle have occasionally reported run-ins that could be with our Psyith. One German ship returned missing most of its crew, its logs filled with a German compound word for “crab beetle spider” that they apparently invented. African ships have also reported being attacked by “the spider beetle.” But this is all around the Bermuda Triangle and sailors aren’t known for impeccable honesty, so I don’t think anyone has taken them seriously.”

“‘Crab beetle spider’ certainly sounds like what we’re looking for, Doctor.”

“I agree, but I want to be more sure. We’re talking about a sailing expedition here, Elim. I don’t know about you, but I have no plans of going off into the Bermuda Triangle without knowing for sure that it’s where I need to be.”

“Do you even know how to sail, Julian?” Elim asked, a wiry smile creeping across his face.

“Not at all!” Julian answered, with an equally mischievous grin.

“Neither do I.”

They shared a laugh over the sheer absurdity of their theoretical plans. Julian was sure he caught another one those purple shifts in Elim’s eyes.

“I’ve told you my story – the real story. Is there any way I could convince you to tell me yours?” he asked, carefully metering his tone between overwhelming curiosity and respect. It was clear to him that Elim had built many more walls than he had, and while his own were built simply because his own story was painful and complicated, Elim’s seemed to be bricked and mortared with fear. Elim evaded the question.

“What makes you think I haven’t already told you my real story?”

“You’re a good liar, Elim, but I can tell when people are hiding something.”

Elim shook his head.

“I must be getting rusty if you can detect that.”

Julian thought it was an odd thing to say, simultaneously avoiding answering the question and admitting that he was lying.

“Also, your eyes turn purple every now and then,” Julian added. Elim’s face went white. Julian was shocked by the response. He remembered mentioning the purple eyes the night before, but realized Elim must have been too caught up in the passion of that particular moment to pick up on it. He watched his partner’s face shift and fall, the very familiar expression of a person whose stomach had just dropped through the floor.

“Hey – it’s alright. I’m sorry I made you uncomfortable. I just want you to know that I know something’s up.”

“I…rather suspected that you did,” Elim answered slowly. Julian held a hand out across the table that was between them.

“Can I ask you a couple of practical questions now, if I promise no follow up questions? These aren’t questions about your story. Only a couple of simple, yes or no answers.”

“Might as well,” Elim answered in defeat.

“Are you in pain?”

It was Elim’s turn to be shocked. He had been expecting something more prying, but this felt only like prescient concern.

“…I am.”

“Does you being in pain have something to do with your history?”

“Yes.”

“If I promise not to ask you why,” The Doctor began softly, “will you promise to keep me updated on how you’re feeling? I may not know the whole story, but I am still a doctor. If you’re in pain, I may be able to help.”

Elim nodded. It was a promise he had no intention of keeping, but he figured making it wouldn’t hurt, and Julian seemed so genuinely concerned about him. For the first time, he realized that Julian’s hand on the table was an invitation, and he took it.

“Thank you,” Julian responded, squeezing his partner’s hand. The brief silence that followed was filled with unsaid words. Julian broke it.

“I’m not going to run away, you know. Whatever you are. I promise no more questions, but know that.”

“…I’ll try to keep that in mind.”

Julian sought to take the edge off his partner’s discomfort by shifting the focus back his own.

“Thank you, by the way,” he said brightly. The volume and enthusiasm were unique to the act of wordlessly assuring the other half of an awkward conversation that everything is still going to be okay after it.

“For what?”

“For not running away from _me_!”

Elim raised his eyebrows.

“I cannot imagine anyone running away from you, Julian.”

“You’d be amazed,” Julian assured him. “I tend to be a bit too much for people. A little too loud and a little too bookish, and a little too a lot of things.” Julian quietly hoped that sharing his own very real fears might take the edge off Elim’s.

“You never seemed concerned, Doctor,” Elim responded, incredulously.

“I hide that concern well. And I learned a long time ago that I’m not good at hiding who I am, so I stopped trying. But it still worries me, with every new interaction. I just ignore those feelings, anymore. I’ve lived with them for so long they’re just a dull ache.”

“I envy you that.”

A powerful gust of wind apparently blew outside, and threw open one of the heavy windows. Elim jumped up to shut it again, laughing to himself.

“I get so involved our conversations that I forget we’re in a haunted house!” he said as he latched the window.

“And still so much house to see!” Julian added enthusiastically.

The awkwardness of the previous moments was quickly forgotten as they were overtaken again by enthusiasm for the house. And there was, indeed, still so much house to see. A little further exploration revealed the other wing of the first floor contained a handful more color-coded sitting rooms, a tremendous formal dining room, and, at the very end, a large kitchen. Julian was studying one of the massive stoves when Elim brought something to his attention that he hadn’t considered yet.

“Did it occur to you, Julian, that this house was intended to be run with dozens of servants? If you intend to live here, you may need to obtain a few.”

“Feels wrong somehow, having servants,” Julian answered absentmindedly, opening cabinets, searching for something indeterminate.

“That’s an admirable perspective, but you may find that we need a hand with this place after a while.”

“I’ll cross that bridge if I happen to get to it.”

The second floor was mostly bedrooms, dozens of them, just as sumptuously and elegantly decorated as the sitting rooms downstairs. Elim and Julian made a quick, deeply judgmental survey of all of them. Some of the mattresses had degraded badly in the years the house had been empty, but some seemed to be in near perfect condition, and Julian finally settled on one of the larger bedrooms to adopt as his own. He wondered, quietly, if the room was only his.

“If I happen to go downstairs in the middle of the night, I think I’m going to get lost on the way back,” Elim said, the concern in his voice hilariously genuine, as he leaned out the door of the room and looked up and down the endless hallway.

“Drop some breadcrumbs,” came the affectionately sarcastic reply. _So you expect to be here in the middle of the night,_ was the unsaid thought.

“It didn’t work well for Hansel and Gretel, and I don’t suspect it’s going to work well for me.”

Julian was contently unloading a trunk full of clothes into one of the large, antique wardrobes.

“How did this happen, anyway?” Elim asked him, or maybe asked the air, as he sat on the large bed and contemplated the position in which he found himself.

“Hmmm?”

“How did this happen? Us, here? I’ve known you for…what, 36 hours? And we’ve gone domestic.”

Julian turned on his heels. Elim was surprised by the almost devastated expression on his face.

“Are you…implying you have a problem with this?” he asked quietly. Elim scrambled to clarify his position.

“Not at all. Not at all, my dear Doctor. I’m merely wondering how I ended up in this position. It’s…somewhat unorthodox for me. Not a way I have normally lived my life.”

“Sometimes you just know, I guess,” Julian answered with a smile. The words were repeating over in his head. _My dear doctor_. So it was a pet name after all, and a deeply affectionate one it seemed.

In between questioning his reality, Elim was wondering what was on the floor above his head. They’d covered two floors of the house and found several of every imaginable type of room a house could have – bedrooms, sitting rooms, dining room, kitchen. Julian posited almost exactly the question in Elim’s mind no more than a few seconds later.

“So what do you think is on the next floor?” he asked.

“I’m not sure, but I was just wondering precisely the same thing. We’ve seen every room a house has, haven’t we? Bedrooms, sitting rooms. A massive kitchen. So what’s above us?”

“Shall we find out?” Julian asked enthusiastically.

“I think maybe we should.”

The climb up the stairs was an anxious one. The curiosity was overwhelming, bubbling. They were surprised when the top step led directly into a large, closed door.

“Why would there be a door at the top of a staircase? The windows on the outside of the house don’t suggest this is an attic.”

“I’m not sure, Doctor, but I suggest you try the door.”

Julian extended a nervous hand and tried the handle, which opened without issue. The room beyond provided an even greater shock than the one they’d had the night before.

The two men were standing at the doorway of an overwhelming library. It stretched to both ends of the space, and appeared to stretch around the corners of the u shaped floorplan. It appeared that the entire area of the home’s outline was occupied on this floor by the one, massive room, forming a tremendous open space. The walls were covered completely with books, from floor to the distant ceiling. There were ladders all around the room, the rolling kind, parked at assorted locations, apparently wherever the last person to use the space had been trying to retrieve a book from.

“First the murals, and now…” Julian trailed off.

“Where does one even get all this money?”

“Deal with the Devil?”

He’d meant it as a joke but they paused and stared at each other.

“That might be a little too real, Dear Doctor.

Julian ran his hand along the spines of some of the books.

“Partly classics, partly arcana…” he said slowly, studying the titles.

“Perhaps the answers to some of your questions about Psyith are buried in these,” Elim wondered aloud, pulling a thick, heavy tome off the shelf. Chips of aged paper fell to the ground like beige snow as he creaked open the dusty book. He was taken by surprise by the book’s language, and held it towards Julian.

“Do you read Ancient Greek, Doctor?”

“A little.”

“Try your hand at this.”

Julian examined the book and did his best to translate it.

“It’s some kind of arcana, for sure. It’s difficult to translate. Some of it’s clear – Bible verses, Quran verses. It seems to be tying assorted religious beings and prophecies to the outer pantheon.”

Elim lifted another dusty book.

“How many languages do you speak again, Doctor?”

“English, French, Arabic, Latin. Enough Greek to read this. A few words and symbols from the outer runes. Yourself?”

“Italian, Norsk, and by way of it most of the Scandinavian languages. German, Italian, Russian.”

“I think you have me beat, but between the both of us we have most of the world covered,” Julian responded with a smile. He took the second book and opened it carefully, and was shocked and thrilled to find it written in Arabic.

“It’s…poetry. Beautiful poetry. Not love poems, though. They seem to talk about the end of the world, in an affectionate tone. It’s as if the writer is looking forward to the apocalypse. He talks about the end of time with great affection.”

It was a place worth spending hours in, and they easily did, flipping through classics translated into unlikely languages and great tomes of arcane knowledge. They got into a battle or two, leaning into their assorted command of languages and accents, reading interesting passages to each other in the most dramatic accents they could manage. It shifted from professionalism to flirting and to ridiculousness and back again, and was a deeply enjoyable way to spend the middle hours of a day. The end of the daylight was spent exploring the gardens and yard, which both men found disappointingly undramatic.

Julian spent the day painfully avoiding asking Elim if he was staying. It was all he wanted to do, but he was afraid to say the words, for reasons he struggled to define. It wasn’t until the question of sleeping arose again that practical concerns overtook his own.

“So…are you…staying?” He asked nervously, from one end of the sofa. Elim was nose deep in one of the books they’d uncovered, a German translation of some novel or other. Julian’s German was poor, but he was fairly sure it was something by Tolstoy.

“Hm?” Elim looked up from his book.

“Are you staying?” Julian repeated, with more confidence this time.

“Of course, Doctor! Where would I go? I’m quite involved in this mystery now.”

“I didn’t…that is, I meant…” Julian stammered over his words, looking for a tactful way to phrase the question he was so badly struggling to put to words. “I meant…are you staying with me. Are you…are we…I think there’s another bedroom with a mattress in good condition, if you’d like…”

“Are you hoping for more escapades, Doctor?” Elim asked, raising a dark eyebrow.

“No – I mean yes – I mean – I give up trying to skirt this! I slept last night. I actually slept. I haven’t slept in years, Elim. Not hard. Not well. But I did, even on that tiny sofa. Escapades are lovely, but that’s not what I’m hoping for. I’m just hoping for a good night’s sleep, a real one, and I suspect I’m not going to get that without you by my side. If you’d rather not, I understand, but it was so nice to sleep.”

Elim set down his book and studied his partner’s dark eyes in the candlelight. Julian looked anxious, well and truly anxious, almost as anxious as Elim was dutifully hiding he was feeling.

“In this cold? My dear doctor, if you think I have any intention of being anywhere other than as close as I can be to that shifting personal fire you call a body, you’re sorely mistaken.”

Julian spent his night leaning into the warmth of the other man’s arms. It was so much easier to sleep while being held, he thought. He’d never really had the chance to test it before. He was vaguely aware, at some point in the night, somewhere over his warm haze, that his partner was making noises – not happy ones, or the contented mumbles of comfort he would have expected. He was asleep, more asleep than he’d been ever before the previous few days, but he was fairly sure he knew what pain sounded like. When he woke up, he woke up alone, and descended the stairs to find Elim standing in the middle of the large entryway, already dressed, and studying the patterns on the floor with the intensity of a man trying to distract himself from something.

“Good Morning!” he called down the stairs. Elim looked up from the floor and affected a smile, but it was an easy smile to see through. Julian joined him, kneeling on the center of the floor.

“What’s this?” he asked, trying to get a conversation of any kind going before asking any pressing questions.

“I’m copying out the patterns on the floor, Doctor. I suspect they may have some mathematical significance.”

“…The pain’s getting worse, isn’t it?”

“…why would you ask that?”

“You were groaning. Almost whimpering, all night. I know what pain sounds like, Elim.”

“Since you’ve already seen through me so skillfully, I’ll admit the pain is getting worse.”

“Why don’t you let me look you over?” the Doctor pleaded. “I might be able to help.”

“There’s no need. I’m already fully aware of what’s causing it.”

“Is there any chance that’s something you’re willing to share?” Julian asked.

“It’s the house. There’s something here, a presence. A gateway. It’s making it…rather difficult to maintain this form.”

Julian extended a hand gently in Elim’s direction and rested it on his partner’s knee.

“You’re not human, are you?” he asked softly.

“Not in the strictest sense, Doctor, no, I am not.”

“Who are you, really?”

“…something that would scare you away so quickly.”

Julian shook his head.

“Never,” he whispered. “You’re not getting rid of me – like it or not!”

He laughed a little, desperately trying to make his partner more comfortable. The attempt at a joke raised only a weak smile. Elim was too busy focusing on Julian’s hand, still resting gently on his knee. Julian spoke gently, but the truth was, his touch was much more convincing than his words. The words felt like placation but the touch felt like a promise, and the longer it lingered the more sincere it got.

“Would the pain go away – would you be free of it – if you could drop the charade?”

“…it would.”

The hand was still there. Elim stared at it, resting on his knee. The Doctor was absentmindedly rubbing his thumb across his partner’s knee, an almost involuntary gesture of comfort. He didn’t even know he was doing it, and Elim could tell, but the involuntary nature of the gesture made it all the more meaningful.

“Then show me,” Julian said softly. “I don’t want you in pain. I promise you, whatever’s beyond this face, whatever you are, I’m not going anywhere.”

Elim considered his options. The paths had narrowed to one.

“Come upstairs, Doctor.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter is already mostly written, so expect it within the next couple of days!


	7. An Examination

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: I wrote this first. This scene existed before the rest of this story. And I love it.

The sound of both men's hearts beating combined into a drumbeat as they ascended the creaky stairs. Julian was excited, fascinated – all he wanted was to know and understand. He hoped what Elim was feeling was close to relief. Elim was mostly afraid, afraid of many things, but mostly of death, or capture. The stakes that came with being anything other than human in a human world had no equal.

Elim pulled Julian into the bedroom they’d adopted and latched the door behind him.

“We’re completely alone out here, you know. It’s not like anyone’s going to see you, even downstairs,” Julian pointed out, somewhere between reassurance and questioning.

“I have to be careful.”

Elim pulled off his shoes and stood for a moment, motionless, staring at the wall, processing the risks of the choices he was making. He desperately hoped that his trust in the Doctor wasn’t misplaced. Julian waited, using as much patience as he could muster, and affecting an air of far more, to see what would occur. He wasn’t sure what he was about to see, but despite what Elim was internally assuming, the emotion wasn’t fear. Only tense, overwhelming anticipation.

Elim glanced at his partner, one eyebrow raised in a wordless request for confirmation that this was truly what they both wanted. Julian answered it with a silent nod.

He watched speechlessly as the body he had known as Elim appeared to dissolve, to disappear into the air itself. The form that was standing before him now was vaguely humanoid in basic form but otherwise somewhere between avian and reptilian, and was watching him, the overwhelming terror still clearly visible behind his purple eyes, his limbs covered in glittering, white scales. Elim was carefully watching every microexpression that passed across his partner’s face. He was looking for fear or judgment, but all he found was fascination. Julian understood immediately as he saw the purple eyes that whatever Elim had done to hide his true self must have been inclined to slip in moments of powerful emotion, and that had been why the purple eyes had occasionally been visible.

“…so you can…shapeshift, then?!” Julian asked excitedly, his eyes glittering in the sun. Elim reacted with shock. _That_ was not the point he was expecting the first remark on.

“…It’s a skill of my people. It’s not infinite, and the other form must be at least a little like our own. But the change is almost complete – we even possess the sensory experience of whatever form we’ve taken.”

“Right. And what you really are,” Julian asked softly, taking a step towards his partner, “…is what, exactly?”

“Did you ever consider, my dear Doctor, that gods are almost pointless if they have no followers to rule?

“All the scholars of the pantheon seem to miss one thing: that the outer beings weren’t the only things around. They had a creation, like your Abrahamic traditions. But there were many, all different races, under different gods. My people were one such race.”

Julian did his best to take that in.

“So what kind of time are we talking about, here? I’m going to assume…not recent.”

“What’s the age you were estimating on the Tethys sea?”

“You cannot possibly be implying that you’re almost 7 million years old.”

Elim raised an eyebrow – or, what would have been an eyebrow.

“It rather depends on how you define age. If you count every moment between birth and death…then yes, I suppose that’s exactly what I’m implying. But I think it’s more reasonable to count age only as the conscious, present years, and by that metric, I’m barely 100.”

“I think I’m going to need a little more detail on that, if you don’t mind.”

“The thing that pulled most of the gods away was a cataclysmic astronomical event. I’d be more specific, only I don’t know exactly what it was. My race was given a gift before the gods departed. We were given the chance to cheat our way into another time, to skip the waiting and see what this world would become. Each of us was asked to choose a date to awake and our gods were kind enough to put us into something like hibernation, a nearly endless sleep. Everyone chose a different time. This way, there was never an invasion. But, occasionally, someone would wake, in whatever time they’d chosen. Some of us consulted the gods, and oracles, and tried to pick good times. I was reckless. I picked a random date. That random date ended up being…about 50 years ago.”

“You say waiting as if it was an option.”

“It was,” Elim answered, the words dripping with meaning.

“You mean to suggest you wouldn’t have died?”

“Not unless killed, no.”

“So the rest of your people – at least the ones who already woke – are out there somewhere, theoretically.”

“Theoretically, yes, but we can’t really find each other.”

“Can you go back into this…hibernation? If you chose?” Julian asked. His mind was racing, trying to understand everything that was being said and implied.

“Not without the help of our gods.”

“So you’re all…immortal, now. No cheats. You just…live, forever?”

“That is about the size of it, yes.”

“That doesn’t scare you?” Julian asked softly.

“…the longer I look at you, Julian, the less it does.”

That opened a space for quiet. Both parties were out of things to say.

“You’re not currently running out of the room, Doctor. I take it you’re not afraid of me.”

“No…no. Not even slightly.”

Julian crossed the space between them in a long stride pressed his hand to Elim’s high cheekbone. Elim leaned into the touch. Even though Julian had proven himself over and over again to be exactly the man he claimed to be, the tenderness of the response was a surprise Elim almost couldn’t process. Julian had promised him, so many times, that this was the reaction he’d have, but Elim had never allowed himself to believe it.

“Can I ask something of you?” The Doctor asked, still stroking his partner’s face.

“I never agree to requests before I know what they’re for, Doctor.”

“Would you allow me to examine you? I’m still a Doctor, and you are like nothing I’ve ever seen before.”

“So you can write about me!” Elim snapped, his demeanor shifting immediately. “So you can learn everything you can, and get published in a medical journal. And then I am hunted, dissected for science.”

“No! No. None of that.” Julian pressed his other hand into Elim’s cheek, cupping his partner’s face in his hands. “I don’t even want to take notes. I only want to understand you. I only want to understand the body I was curled up next to.”

“…I’m sorry. It is…unfair of me to make such accusations of you. But you must understand why I live with these fears.”

“Of course.”

“…and what does this ‘examination’ entail?”

“Only what the title implies. I study your body, by looking at you, and touching you. I have no equipment, no tests to run. I only want a basic understanding of your body, and how it works. I have nothing to compare you to. If we’re going to be together, I want to understand how to care for you. There’s nothing technical, and nothing to fear. Not unless you mind me touching you.”

He said the last words with a wink, which was enough to raise a smile from Elim’s unsure face.

“If that is all, Doctor, I don’t see why not.”

Julian smiled broadly, the love and scientific enthusiasm beginning to mix. He stepped away from Elim and affected an almost playful tone of professionalism.

“Please remove your clothes.”

Elim eye his partner distrustfully, but slowly began to remove his clothing. First the jewelry – pocket watch and cufflinks gently placed on the table. Then his waistcoat, gold and red brocade. He found himself deliberately delaying as he smoothed the waistcoat over a chair. He could feel his partner’s eyes on him. That was ridiculous, he thought. He’d slept with this man, both in the euphemistic and the literal sense. The handsome doctor who now watched him undress had been curled up next to his body just a few hours before. But somehow none of that closeness had prepared him for this. As he considered his scales in the sunlight, it dawned on him that no matter how close they had been, he had still been hiding. It was still his body he had shown, technically, but it didn’t _feel_ like it, and so being seen that form did not feel like nakedness. It felt more like being seen in a costume. Now as the light glinted in iridescent patterns off his scales, he felt the nervousness, the self-consciousness, that accompanied real nakedness climbing up his spine. He was so unused to being seen in this form in any context, so used to fearing what would be done to him if another soul so much as knew of his existence in this form, that standing there, preparing to present his body to the Doctor, felt like another level of being revealed – not only like physical nudity but spiritual as well. And Elim Garak, man of secrets, man of evasion, man of telling no truths, was as far from an exhibitionist as one could be. Baring himself, literally, physically, spiritually – these were things he was deeply uncomfortable with and deeply bad at.

Julian noticed his partner’s hesitation.

“Would you like some privacy?” he asked softly. Elim paused.

“No thank you, Doctor. It’s a very kind thought, but since I’m sure you’ll be seeing me in whatever state of undress I end up in, I don’t think it makes any difference if you observe the lead up to that point.”

“That’s a very fair point,” he agreed. “And remember, no matter the context, I’m still the same man. I can’t help being a scientist, but I’m still your Julian.”

Elim considered the words. Julian was right.

“It might make you more comfortable if you think of me that way” Julian continued. “Don’t think of me as a scientist. You know me, Elim. You have known me. There’s nothing to fear.”

Elim nodded and returned to slowly undressing. He spoke as he did.

“I know. But I ask you to understand that no other human has ever seen as much as my real face. And now you ask me to submit myself to you for examination, for detailed analysis.” He removed his shirt and folded it carefully. Julian’s breath caught in his throat. The iridescent, glittering scales that covered his partner’s limbs covered his entire body, and across his chest took a hexagonal form, knitting together in a perfect, uninterrupted tessellation. The smoothness of the arrangement allowed the scales to reflect unfettered, and his Elim’s chest was awash with colors in the morning light, nearly casting rainbows across the floor. Julian had to stop himself from making a noise of amazement aloud and re-centered his scientific demeanor. Elim slowly removed the rest of his clothing and met his partner’s eyes.

“Are you quite alright, Doctor?”

Elim hoped he could take his own mind off the creeping, overwhelming discomfort he felt standing there by focusing on his partner’s emotions instead. Julian, for his part, nodded slowly.

“Yes. I’m fine. Only…shocked, is all.” He took a small, cautious step forward. “You’re beautiful. Absolutely…beautiful.”

That was not a word Elim was used to having applied to him, but it was the only word Julian could find.

“Lie down. On the bed, please,” Julian asked gently. He was painfully aware of his partner’s discomfort, but the scientific fascination was irresistible. Julian reached for his sense of professionalism, but it was simply too far away to be caught. He brushed it with the tips of his fingers like the handle of a teacup on the other side of a table; close enough to touch but not to grasp and pull in. He surrendered slightly to his own amazement, and accepted that there was absolutely no chance of his hiding his complete awe at the appearance of the body that stood before him. Elim stepped over the bed and lay down in it. He swept his long, curling tail to one side. Julian leaned slightly over the bed and studied his partner, who was now lying there, the whole of his unusual body on display.

“Are you comfortable?” Julian asked. He motioned to the tail. “Are you alright being on your back, with that?”

“Perfectly,” Elim reassured him. Julian nodded and took a moment to take in the whole of Elim’s true form.

He was human in aspect. He had, still, two arms and two legs. The face was something between that of a lizard and a very thin man, gaunt, but not with the appearance of being so due to poor health or malnourishment. Instead, he appeared perfectly naturally thin, high cheekbones hung above sunken cheeks that curved out again over a tapered, reptilian jaw. The forehead was high and the space that on a human would have held a nose was flat, with only a slight curve, and two round nostrils above the almost human lips. The skull was almost human, but instead of hair, he had thin, deep black feathers, which almost comically mirrored the hairstyle he had worn in his human form; they were swept to one side with a hint of wave in them, and at a distance, it would have been easy to assume they _were_ hair. But they were definitely feathers, the barbs clearly visible in the sun. They became finer at the base with lots of thin, soft fluff, and it was all Julian could do to refrain from running his hand through them. The eyes were catlike, round and large with something pleading about them. The irises were bright violet, and Julian was sure they were glowing. They were definitely in some kind of motion, the colored rings containing deep black swirls that moved constantly like shimmer in a glass of water. The irises were of no familiar shape but instead the shape of 8 pointed stars, and they were watching the doctor piercingly. The whole of Elim’s face was covered in those glittering, white, hexagonal scales, and the points that would be blush on a human still seemed to be blush on Elim. The color, instead of pink, had been pale lavender at first. As he had undressed and taken his current position under the gently examining eye of his affectionate doctor the color had begun deepening towards purple. Julian quietly made a mental note that Elim’s species, whatever it was, certainly seemed to blush like a human.

His hands were somewhere between human and reptile, with 4 long, thin fingers and a thumb, all of which widened slightly at the ends and bore a single, curved black claw. His arms were long and thin, bones and ligaments and minimal musculature. The legs were faun like, with muscular thighs, and the feet, like his hands, were mostly reptilian or bird-like in shape, but broader than one would expect, with 4 toes of equal length, each of those as well bearing a single, curved black claw. The whole of his body was covered in pure white scales, with a vibrant iridescence in the light. It gave him the appearance of being covered in a shifting, morphing rainbow. The scales on his extremities were hard, interlocked and overlapped, like one would expect on a snake. But the scales on his torso were, as Julian had noticed before, hexagonal, and perfectly tessellated. They appeared softer, bending easily over the curves of his chest and stomach.

There was a pattern, complex and spiraling, which extended down his torso. It began at his shoulders, apparently extending over them, and ran in two stripes down the sides of his body, forking off into three lines as it reached his hips. The innermost lines curved inwards, meeting in a wide v across his groin. The middle fork extended down the outside of his legs, fading artfully into a pattern of small spots and then to nothing at all just above the joint one might call a knee. The outer lines curved back and around his hips, out of sight against the sheets. The stripes were patterned and complex, made of great dark swirls that morphed and shifted, spirals tightening and loosening in a rhythm that seemed almost vascular in nature. Julian was sure that the pattern seemed to be changing color as well, morphing almost imperceptibly from pure black to a deep purple and back again with each contraction. And then there was the tail – like the tail of a dragon but disproportionately long, twice the length of his body, nearly, the width of his thigh at the base but thinning dramatically like a whip at the end, pure white around with a stripe of pure black scales underneath, all glittering and iridescing in the light.

It was almost too much for the Julian to take in, and he found himself staring intently into the deep purple eyes. Elim blinked, slowly. Julian noticed the presence of the transparent third eyelid common to birds and reptiles as he did so.

“What, exactly, do you want to know about me?” Elim asked, tilting his head to one side.

“…everything.”

“I had to ask. You used the word ‘examine’, but at the moment you seem more trapped in ‘stare’.”

“I’m sorry. I’m just taking it all in.”

Julian studied the body. He was going to have to start somewhere, and top to bottom seemed a reasonable scientific method. Partly out of scientific curiosity, and partly out of his own inability to resist, he reached a hand slowly in the direction of the fine, black feathers which stood in the place of hair. Elim looked up past his brow at the doctor’s hand.

“That is, I assure you, the least interesting thing about me.”

“That may be true,” Julian answered, smiling slightly, “but I have to start somewhere.” He paused, the tips of his fingers almost brushing the feathers.

“May I?” he asked softly. Elim nodded. Julian buried a hand in the feathers. They were soft and flexible, an odd facsimile of hair, but still clearly and obviously different. Elim couldn’t help smiling. Julian looked so entranced and so completely in love. Elim felt sure that he had never seen such an expression of love in his life, and never directed towards himself. Julian pulled his hand gently through the feathers, combing them through with his fingers. Elim watched the look on his lover’s face shift from soft affection to scientific fascination and back again. He noted that for the Doctor, the two seemed to be intrinsically linked.

Julian removed his hand from the feathers and pulled his focus down a few inches to the glowing, violet, shifting eyes that had been haunting him from moment one. He pulled a matchbook from his pocket and struck a match, bringing the light close to one of the eyes. Instead of the pupils contracting in the light, the points of the stars became suddenly sharper, changing from an almost wavy outline to a true, sharply pointed star. The Doctor quietly made another mental note. Elim could find it in himself to do nothing but lie there and watch his handsome, curious human study him with intensity.

Julian turned his attention to the torso and noticed for the first time that it seemed completely motionless. He paused – stared – he was right. There was no motion in the chest, no apparent breathing. Caught up now in overwhelming scientific fascination, he pressed a hand against Elim’s chest, feeling for a rising and falling, any kind of motion, any sign of respiration at all. The scales were much softer than he expected, and he found himself running his hand across them, appreciating the way the apparently hard shapes conformed perfectly to the curves of the odd arrangement of muscles. Had he not been so focused on his search for breath he would have seen the pale purple flush on his partner’s cheeks deepening to something warm and royal. Elim couldn’t see his own face but he could feel the warmth in it just the same, and he was quietly glad that Julian was too busy being a scientist to notice.

That hand on his chest wasn’t new. It certainly wasn’t the first time he had felt Julian’s touch, nor the most intimate situation. But it was the first time he had felt _anyone’s_ touch in this form, and he was realizing why he had preferred his clothes to be loose and flowing in this form while, when he had masqueraded as a human, he had no difficulty with the layers and varieties of complex, tight fabrics that were so in fashion. He understood now that the sense of touch apparently possessed by humans paled in comparison to his own. He had lived in that human body for so long, and only ever in his own before that, and never before had he had the exact same sensation to compare, not only with one form and the other but also in such quick succession, and he wasn’t sure what to do with any of it. The touch of a partner was always pleasant, certainly, but even knowing what Julian’s hands felt like against human skin hadn’t prepared him for the way they would feel against his scales, warm and soft and gentle and soothing and _nice_ , all in a way none of the languages he spoke could find words for. He wished he could keep the Doctor there, hands pressed against his chest, forever. He wanted to grab Julian by the shoulders and shake him a little and tell him this love was blossoming into something he hadn’t even known he was capable of. But he had only been himself in front of Julian for 30 minutes at most, and he considered himself lucky that the Doctor hadn’t bolted then and there, and he didn’t want to risk doing anything to ruin this absolutely perfect moment, and he felt just a tiny spark of the kind of security that makes you okay with not saying things right now because you feel safe in the belief that you’ll have time to say them later. So he only smiled, and let a small contented noise rumble in his throat, and when Julian looked up at him in surprise, he took the opportunity of eye contact to quietly say “Your hands feel nice.”

Julian let out a sigh, a hint of shock in his face, and relaxed the tension in his shoulders. He had been quietly afraid of hurting Elim, and the contented response was a relief.

“I’m glad,” he said softly. “So…do you…breathe?”

“Not in the way you understand it. I don’t think I could explain it myself.”

“Right. How does your body even work, then, if not running on oxygen? Or…on something?”

“To be honest, dear Julian, I have no idea.”

“How is that possible?”

“Do humans understand how their own bodies work? I remind you that to be a thing is not necessarily to understand a thing. Your profession exists because the average human doesn’t understand the human body. I may be an ancient thing but that doesn’t mean I understand myself. We had healers too, you know.”

Julian shrugged a little, as if to say, “Fair enough.” He returned his hands to Elim’s chest. Elim made another small, contented noise.

“You were very suspicious of my idea, but you seem quite happy with it now.”

“I have seen the error of my ways, Doctor.”

Julian noticed, for the first time, a rhythm under his hands, and moreover that it seemed completely unnatural.

_BUMP-BUMP-BUMP-bump-bump. BUMP-BUMP-BUMP-bump-bump._

Julian smoothed his hands across Elim’s chest, searching for the source of the rhythm. It was close, certainly, but where, exactly?

“Is this even science, anymore?” Elim whispered groggily, in the hazy tone of someone sinking so far into relaxation that they were on the edge of sleep, “Or is this just for my benefit?”

“It’s still science” Julian reassured himself as much as his patient. “But I’m glad you’re enjoying it.”

Elim nodded slowly, eyes closed. Julian turned his attention back to his only debatably scientific endeavor, searching for the source of the beats. He tried the correct spot for a heart on a human – no dice, on both sides. He pulled his hand lower, down the…ribs? They seemed like ribs. Ah. That was the right direction. Lower, towards the hip – no, too far. Back up. Third rib from the bottom. To the right. Slowly. _There._ Julian pressed his hand into the upper right part of the stomach. THERE was a rhythm. One of them. Not all of it. Another, on the other side, maybe? The Doctor pressed his other hand against the mirror of the location. There was the other rhythm. They were different from each other, one slow and simple, like a human heartbeat. The other was much faster and had a few extra beats in it, and felt nothing like any pattern any human heart had ever made.

“Two hearts” Julian whispered to himself.

“Mmmm?” Elim inquired sleepily.

“Two hearts?”

“Two hearts.”

“You have hearts, you have a vascular system. Do you bleed?”

“I do.”

“Breath no, blood yes” Julian confirmed aloud.

“Correct.” Came the sleepy response.

Julian smiled to himself. There was something warming in his heart about seeing such a simple touch bring his partner so much happiness. He caught a dark flash out of the corner of his eye and saw that the twisting and contracting of the spiral patterns up and down Elim’s sides perfectly matched the second, faster beat. He pressed a hand against one of the spirals, counting the rapid beats. The patterns, as far as he could tell, weren’t simply pigmentation, but another kind of flesh entirely. He could feel the muscles shifting with each pulse, the spirals tightening and loosening again under his hands. He realized as he studied them that the frantic beat was slowing, every complex pattern calmer than the one before.

Elim was, very happily, on the outside fringes of consciousness. Julian was right – he hadn’t been on board with this idea at the beginning, but as soon as those hands had grazed his scales he had somewhat changed his opinion. The Doctor was now carefully studying one of the spirals on his hip. Elim still had his eyes closed, but he could feel it, Julian gently pressing his fingers into the complex, vascular tissue, probably being fascinated by it somehow. Elim fought to keep a purr from escaping his throat. The Doctor’s touch still felt wonderful. The only thing Elim could remember ever feeling as a human that had elicited an even slightly similar sensation was the feeling of soft fur being pulled across his skin, a mink blanket on his stomach on a cold morning. This was more intense in a wholly different way than the sexuality of the nights before. That touch had been exciting, tempting, and probably would have ended this moment in activities significantly less calm than the one he was currently engaged in. But where the feeling of that hand on his thigh had been sexy before it was now relaxing beyond belief, almost supernaturally so, the sensation of Julian’s fingers against his scales lulling him to the edge of sleep. It would be easy to see that as a bad thing, but that would be to completely misunderstand it. The attraction, the excitement, was all still available, buried somewhere, ready to bubble up if asked. But now it felt pure, without the undertones of anxiety and shame that had made it feel so heart-poundingly forbidden. It was a wonderful change. Elim felt his heart slipping into a kind of warmth he’d never known. There were no more secrets of his body or himself left to hide – Julian knew exactly what he was, and he was still there. This, apparently, was what it felt like to be truly known – and a 15-pound weight had been lifted from his shoulders. Elim wondered, as his conscious thoughts slowly turned to dreams, if this was where real love diverged from lust. Love like this, he decided, was better than anything else.

Julian felt the rhythm under his hands slow to something almost imperceptible. It was replaced quickly by a deep, rumbling vibration. Julian looked up at his Elim’s face to see his eyes closed, head lolled to one side, a contented expression settled on his face. Julian pressed his hand deep into the skin. The rumbling grew more intense as he did.

_No. It couldn’t be._

Julian quickly built a theory. He lifted his hand and listened. The sound stopped immediately. He pressed his hand back down against his partner’s hip and felt the vibrations start again. He had to smile at the realization. The man who was laid out so gently on his bed was purring. Julian stood from his perch by Elim’s hips and bent over the peaceful, sleeping face. He reached down and gently touched Elim’s throat. That was, unquestionably, where the sound was coming from. Julian felt his heart swelling. Much like the conclusion he had no way of knowing the other man had also reached, he quietly decided that this was definitely love, in the truest and purest of senses. He lifted his hand again, and again the purring stopped short.

“I’ll be back, my love” he softly reassured the sleeping figure. He was fairly certain that Elim couldn’t hear him, but he felt obliged to comfort him anyway. He pulled the blankets at the end of the bed up over his partner’s sleeping form, peeled off the most constricting layers of his own clothing, and crawled under the covers himself. He pulled himself close to the sleeping body, wrapping his leg over his partner’s. He reached out and began gently smoothing his hand across the scales, rubbing large, slow circles into Elim’s chest. The purring resumed immediately. Julian smiled, warmly content in his ability to raise those happy little noises. He closed his eyes and rested his head against Elim’s chest, soft purring sounds in his ears. There weren’t many perfect moments to be had in this life, he knew. His own life, certainly, had very few. But this, he decided, was definitely one of them.


	8. Understanding

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look at me, writing again!! I am so proud of me! Nothing like a quarantine to make you get back to your 30k WIP.

The books were everywhere. Piled high, in teetering stacks, aged dust falling from them and clouding the air and the floor.

“We should really go back, Julian.”

Elim’s thick, complicated, and no longer even _slightly_ Scandinavian accent rose from behind one of the piles.

Research. That was what they had turned to. Hard, headache-inducing, infuriating, academic research. The collection already present in the library was far more complete than any collection in any institution either of them had known, so there was no better place for it. The Doctor was holed up in one corner, surrounded by books in the languages he could read. His reptilian companion monopolized a significantly larger patch of floor, books all around him in his own broad collection of languages. Julian raised his nose from the book in his hand, _A Treatise on the Concept of Sailing,_ and turned an affectionate eye to the glittering, 7-foot-tall dragon of a man who was seated quite serenely in the middle of a circle of stacks of books.

“Do you _want_ to go back?” Julian asked.

A book teetered and threatened to fall to the floor, and Elim, without raising an eye from the pages in his hands, caught it with his tail, and carefully placed it back on its pile. Oh, how good it felt, to use that tail again.

“ _Show off_ ,” Julian admonished affectionately. “I see you avoiding the question. Do you want to go back?”

Elim closed his book and focused his purple eyes on his lover.

“Of course I don’t! My dear Doctor, that’s the last thing I want. But if I may remind you, we are likely both being missed by now, and all sorts of…interesting rumors have likely appeared. _I_ have a reputation already so hopelessly tarnished by my personality that a few whispers about my unexplained disappearance are barely an addition to the pile. But you, Julian, still so brand new and spotless – I’d hate to damage your good name so quickly.”

“It’s a very kind thought, but I’m about as worried about my reputation as I am about a hurricane hitting Greenland. And anyway – if we go back, that means you…have to be human again, or something like it. I’d hate to do that to you.”

Elim shrugged. “I’ll have to return to that form eventually, no matter how much I dislike the idea. I don’t think a…” – Elim studied his hands in the sunlight – “what you might call a lizard man has much chance in society as he is.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Julian acquiesced. He lifted the book in his hands and launched into a ramble.

“What do you think of the idea of a sailing expedition? To find the other thing – Psyith? We’re looking at the South Atlantic right now as our best theory, and that should be fairly calm sailing. I’d love to see a spider beetle, and I’m out of other ideas. And imagine – in the ocean, on a boat – you could be yourself without fear.”

“Your fancy is endearing, but I remind you, Julian, that you know precisely nothing about sailing.”

“I could learn!” Julian protested, raising his book above his head. He knew, though, that that was not a likely outcome.

“Julian Bashir, you may be a lot of things, but I do not ever think you will be a sailor.”

“You’re right,” the Doctor replied dejectedly, slumping into his chair. “But how do we do this, then?”

Elim shrugged again, and went back to his book, a gesture of acceptance that reading was their only way forwards.

Julian took a moment to study him. He was beautiful, sitting in the afternoon sunlight, the book in his large hands. He seemed oddly content seated on the floor, but Julian felt slightly guilty about it, and rather lonely in the large chair he had monopolized.

“You don’t have to sit on the floor, you know,” he said. Elim unfolded himself hastily from the floor and joined his partner in the large, plush chair, book still in his hands. The Doctor leaned back into the other man, snuggling into him, his nose still in his own book. He felt an arm wrap around his middle and glanced up in confusion. His assumption was correct – Elim still had both hands on his book. So what, then…? A realization came clear in Julian’s mind. He glanced down to see, wrapped around his waist, not an arm, but a tail. He couldn’t help but smile.

“Doctor?”

Julian opened a sleepy eye, and realized he had drifted. He made a note of the fact that he had drifted at all. He wasn’t used to drifting into sleep. It seemed as if the only place he was able to do so was when Elim was close by.

“Sorry, I must have dozed a little. What is it?”

“I’m sorry to wake you, but listen to this.”

There was excitement glimmering in his voice. He launched into the next sentences with deliberateness in his voice.

_“There have been reports that some brave men have been able to invoke the powers of the outer gods by means of complex rites undertaken at certain places where dimensions seem to converge. Some have been known to build large homes on these ‘convergences.’ These homes are often sumptuous and filled with relic art; the general idea being to present the home as a shrine or offering in exchange for power or favor from far-flung dimensions. The legends often suggest that these homes are built to support specific rites, their very architecture intended to work symbiotically with the skills of talented occultists. If one could learn the particular rites intended, one could theoretically use one of these homes to obtain untold power and otherworldly capabilities. Stories told of them include alchemy, telepathy, life creation, and teleportation. Alas, while the reports are extensive, one of these ‘offering homes’ has never actually been found.”_

As Elim went on, Julian’s dark eyes grew larger and larger.

“…Is that what we’ve got, Elim? What did they call it? An Offering Home?”

“It certainly seems that way. Although, I was intrigued by that one phrase – teleportation. Maybe _that’s_ how we get to the south Atlantic.”

Julian pulled himself upright, finally coming out of his warm haze. “Do you mean to suggest that learning an ancient rite to contact an outer god would be easier than learning to sail?”

Elim smiled softly, reaching out to press his large hand against his partner’s cheek.

“My dear, you and I both know this is much more your speed.”

Julian rolled his eyes, but he knew Elim was right.

“We really should go back, you know,” Elim continued. “I know you don’t want to. I don’t particularly want to either. But consider: we know what we’re doing now, and if we have any desire to keep our respective incomes, we should probably spend some time on the job we happen to share.”

“I know. Tomorrow, then. We’ll go back, and regroup, and maybe do our jobs for a while” – this part was said with a laugh – “and then maybe we’ll have a better idea of what exactly we’re up against.”

* * *

“Sir?”

A young man was desperately trying to get the attention of his distracted professor.

“ _Sir!”_

Elim’s eyes snapped back.

“I’m sorry. Where was I?”

“Are you alright, sir?” the youth asked.

Elim was alright. He was more than alright, for the first time in his life. He wasn’t distracted by his follies or anxieties, worrying about the future, or panicking about his true self. In fact, he was daydreaming about the last few days, about buttered toast and morning sunlight and a warm hand on his chest. It was fun, he thought, being cared about by someone. He had dramatically underestimated exactly how nice it would be.

“I’m just fine, thank you,” he scrambled. “As I was saying, reports of ancient reptilian species vary widely in details and specifics. Some researchers’ theories...”

On the other side of the campus, seated cross-legged in the grass, Julian was surrounded by papers, drawings and pages and old parchments. He was hastily comparing the layout of the house and some of its rooms with drawings of sigils and arrangements of offerings for every ancient rite and every god he could find. If Elim’s theory about the house was right, and it did connect somehow to a dimensional convergence, there had to be a geometric component of some kind. He had his own hasty and unskillful drawings of some of the deities from the frescos on the ceilings spread around him too, and was comparing them to books and accounts, doing his best to put names to the incomprehensible images. Cthulhu was easy to recognize, as were some of the other beings. One of them bore a striking resemblance to the creature Julian remembered from the desert, albeit with some distinctive differences. A few were completely beyond anything he’d ever seen or anything that appeared in his texts. The one he liked best looked sort of like a hovering mass of tentacles and eyes. It made less and less sense the longer he stared at it, and it seemed to make his symptoms all the worse, but he couldn’t stop staring at it. There was something almost welcoming in the thing.

“You seem very interested in that one,” Elim said, from somewhere distantly behind him.

“It’s particularly fascinating, I admit.”

Elim sat down across from his partner and studied the papers.

“Making any progress?”

“A little?”

Julian handed over one of the symbols and the room he had matched it with. “I think these go together. I still don’t quite understand what it means, but…”

“They’re intended for specific rituals. This…this I am familiar with. That’s what the sigils are for, to begin with – they’re to be drawn on the ground with specific objects placed on the points.”

“Very original,” Julian teased affectionately. “Not at all like every other brand of occultism…”

“Where do you think they got it from?”

A dark-skinned young woman in full academic regalia hesitantly interrupted the conversation. She had books in her arms and a concerned look on her face.

“Mister Garak? I’m sorry to interrupt your afternoon, only – ”

Elim smiled warmly at the girl and shook his head. “Not at all my dear. How can I be of assistance?”

“This isn’t your field, in any way.”

“Try me.”

The woman eagerly sat down on the ground and placed a large book in front of her, opening it to a series of chemical drawings. “Alchemy I understand,” she said, with a hint of laughter in her voice, “but actual chemistry is going to be the end of me.”

“My dear, I assure you, I understand even less of what’s on that page than you do. I think my companion is likely more knowledgeable on this particular subject.”

The woman apparently noticed Julian for the first time and pushed the book in his direction.

“You are exactly correct. This is not my field,” Elim agreed as Julian studied the book he’d been presented. “Not to suggest you did anything wrong by it, but may I ask why you ask me? Dr. Bouchard is the one to bring these problems to.”

“I’d rather speak to you, if it’s all the same.”

Elim shrugged a little and raised an eyebrow. Julian opened the book in front of him and launched – as he was so good at – into a complex explanation.

* * *

“Thank you, Doctor. And thank you, Mister Garak – this is the least confused I’ve been in years.”

The woman unfolded herself from the ground and excused herself with a polite nod.

“Sir?” she added, turning back, briefly.

“Yes?”

She motioned lightly to Julian. “If I may say so, he’s exactly what you needed, Sir.”

A warm blush filled Elim’s cheeks as the young woman shifted her focus to Julian. “You’re what he needed,” she continued. “He’s lonely. He pretends he’s isn’t, like he’s something very different when we’re around. But we can all tell he’s lonely. He needs someone to take care of him. He’s always taken care of me. Doctor, for my sake – return the favor I can’t. Take care of him.”

“I will. That’s a promise.”

Apparently content with the answer, she nodded, and was gone.

“I distinctly remember you saying your students didn’t like you.”

Elim was blushing again, apparently deeply embarrassed by the occurrence. “Mostly they don’t. They find me…difficult. Unpleasant. But there are exceptions. That girl – her name is Fadiya. Doctor, she’s brilliant. She doesn’t struggle with much. She speaks my language. It would not be inaccurate to say we bonded. She’s going to do something incredible one day, though I don’t know what that will be.”

“Who’s the other professor? Dr. Bouchard?”

“Chemistry. He’s something of a difficult man. Certainly more disliked than I.”

“She trusted you. That’s why she ended up here. She didn’t want to admit she was confused to anyone. But she trusted you.”

“I think getting people to trust you is more your speed, Julian.”

* * *

“You’re right, Doctor. The murals, the furniture, the sigils – they’re all connected. Those rooms were configured to commune with specific deities. Pick a room, pick a god.”

“How does that even work? Wouldn’t the offerings – objects – whatever is meant to go on the points of one of those drawings – need to be symbolic somehow? All we’ve got is fancy furniture.”

“I have absolutely no idea.”

“Do you know what I think, Elim?”

“Mmm?”

“I think you’re a sweetheart, underneath it.”

“Excuse me, Doctor?”

“I think you’re a whole lot softer than you let on. I think you care more about everyone than you admit. You cared about that young woman.”

“I’ll admit, I am…invested in her.”

Julian leaned across the table between them and planted a completely unexpected kiss on the other man’s forehead.

“It wasn’t an accusation, you know. It was a compliment. You don’t have to look so guilty.”

There was that blush again, warm and pink. Julian was starting to feel like he really understood this man. There was a golden heart in there, wrapped up in scales and a distant attitude.

Elim was thinking, as he studied the other man’s face, that he looked so beautiful, and so mortal. So incredibly, incredibly mortal. He was aging already, with his greying beard and fine lines around his eyes and mouth. He was aging beautifully, but he was still aging. Humanity was frail, and so tied to time. Elim wondered how many years the other man had left. 40? 50? 60? How old was he, anyway? Elim had no idea. He didn’t really have a good grasp of how humans aged. He guessed about 50 years, probably. 50 years felt like an unbearably short amount of time. He was so used to thinking in millennia and eons. His own subjective experience may not have been much longer than the Doctor’s but he had been prepared from his youth for orders of magnitude more, and every cultural reference he had was built around an understanding of eternity. The same soft lines that made Julian’s eyes so beautiful seemed to frame his mortality and Elim’s lack thereof in stark relief.

Julian watched the expression on his partner’s face shift and soften, and then turn unexpectedly sad.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. I’m sorry. Just a passing moment.”

It was, course, not just a passing moment. As he lay in bed that night he found himself staring at the sleeping form of his lover, peaceful and thin in the tiny hint of moonlight.

The Doctor opened his eyes, slowly, as if he’d somehow sensed he was being watched. Elim’s purple eyes were focused distantly on him.

“Is everything alright?”

“You’re going to die.”

Maybe, Julian thought, he didn’t quite understand this man after all.

“…what!?”

“You’re going to die,” Elim repeated. “Not now. Not soon. Not for 40 or 50 years, at least. But you’re human, Doctor. Your death is a guaranteed eventuality, not a possibility.”

Julian propped himself up on an elbow. “…it is. But that doesn’t mean you have to think about it. 50 years is a long time. That’s a whole lot of life.”

“I remind you, Doctor, that I am, functionally, immortal. Death is not a subject with which I am well acquainted.”

“You’d think humans would think about death all the time,” Julian pondered. “But we don’t. Most of us don’t, at least.”

Elim rolled onto his back with a dejected flop. “Of course you don’t,” he said, raising his hands to the ceiling as if bargaining with it. “You’re not the ones who have to keep on living.”

“And what made you think about this?”

“50 years is a long time to you, but I feel like I can see the end of it every time I close my eyes. I didn’t think about it. Not at first. But now…”

Elim’s voice seemed to get quieter every time he was forced to say something that betrayed his vulnerability. “but now,” he added softly, “every time I look into your eyes I seem to start thinking about what I’m going to do when I can’t anymore.”

Julian hoped that his warmth would be enough of a distraction and curled himself around the reptilian figure. He felt Elim’s tail wrapping protectively around his waist.

“Do me a favor and try not to, alright? We have so many years to live like this. Maybe it’s not indefinite. But that will have to be okay. You don’t gain anything by trying to face the worst parts of life before you have to. If you’re guaranteed some period of sadness in your life, don’t voluntarily make it longer. Let’s let the good parts be the best they can be, alright?”

“I suppose you have a point, my dear.”

Not even my dear doctor, anymore. Just _my dear._ Julian cuddled closer at the words. Another tiny step closer to each other. Every little step felt better than the one before. He was almost asleep, cheek pressed against the cool scales, when he was shaken awake by Elim’s large hand on his shoulder.

“I’m sorry – Julian – I’m sorry, you looked so comfortable.”

Elim looked completely different than a few moments before, his eyes wide and excitable. He was beginning to look like Julian in one of his own moments.

“It’s alright. What is it, what are you thinking?”

“I’ve figured something out, Doctor. I’ve had an epiphany – I understand something now. I think, perhaps, there is a whole lot more to that furniture than we thought.”


End file.
